


Talk You Down

by scrunchieface14



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, American History, Anxiety, Brothers, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Family Drama, Foster Care, Gen, Historical References, References to Depression, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-06-21 22:45:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrunchieface14/pseuds/scrunchieface14
Summary: "'Cause if you go, I go." Every time Matthew runs, Alfred is there to bring him home again.





	1. Chapter 1

Mattie cowers before the enormous caterpillar eyebrows that hover over him, knitted together in equal parts concern and apprehension. Six years old is still too young to understand the anxiety that a new foster kid brings; it's old enough to recognize the tension he feels in the air. It's not exactly hostile, but it's not welcoming, and he holds tighter to the hand of the worn teddy bear that's almost as big as he is and drags on the ground. He closes his eyes and imagines that the damp paw is a strong, warm hand that belongs to twinkling blue eyes and a radiant smile, rather than glassy plastic beads and lopsided stitching.

He swallows the tears and looks back up at the eyebrows—the eyes are a pleasant green, but he can't seem to focus on that—when their owner clears his throat.

"Hello Matthew. I'm Arthur Kirkland. Welcome to your new foster home." Arthur cringes even as he says it. _Be a little more stiff and formal, why don't you?_

Mattie looks at his shoes. "Thank you, Mr. Kirkland."

 _Mr. Kirkland? Ghastly!_ "You can call me Arthur."

 _You can call me Mattie._ Silence extends into too many seconds for either of them to be comfortable, but Arthur breaks first.

"Shall we bring your things upstairs?" He lifts the predictably light suitcase without waiting for an answer. Mattie doesn't mind—he's just glad he doesn't have to make his voice work—and he follows Arthur meekly to the staircase at the back of the neatly kept townhouse.

He studies his new home as they make their way, throwing sidelong glances at things that draw his eye, afraid that if he moves his head too much, Arthur will catch him looking. There's a kitchen on his left, a sitting room on his right. The warmth of faded cherry wood gives the kitchen an inviting look, and glass-paneled cabinets overflowing with haphazard stacks of mismatched mugs make it seem a bit more like home. There's a teapot on the counter whose matching teacup Mattie locates when he glances into the sitting room. It sits in its saucer on an end table next to a cream-colored wingback chair. A vintage-style love seat in another shade of off-white—it bothers Mattie with its slight difference—and a nondescript coffee table complete the picture. It all looks so neat and picture-perfect, Mattie has a hard time believing that this guy is a foster parent; life with the system is anything but perfect. Then he sees the jagged lines of red and blue crayon running up the walls of the staircase and he feels like he can breathe again. He even smiles a little bit and relaxes his hold on the teddy bear's arm. He wants to reach out and trace the colors that sit right at fingertip level, but Arthur's presence looming just in front of him keeps his arms pressed at his sides all the way to the second floor.

"This will be your bedroom." Arthur stops outside a door that stands slightly ajar and turns to look expectantly at the boy standing behind him like a pale shadow.

Mattie sees that Arthur is waiting for him to go inside first, so he grips his bear's paw tight and pushes the door open. The white painted wood is cool against his sweaty palm, but the hinges creak and Mattie can feel himself shrinking. Arthur doesn't blink; it's like he doesn't even notice the disturbance. Or maybe he's just pretending, to be nice. Mattie takes in the room for a moment before Arthur starts talking again.

"You'll be sharing it with Alfred." Mattie notes the twin beds on either side of the window. "He's about your age. I assume they told you?" They had. It would be good for him, they had said. "I'm sorry about the mess." There are crayons and paper and legos everywhere. A model airplane held together with little more than scotch tape lies at Mattie's feet. "He said he was making a surprise for you and wouldn't let me in."

A surprise? Mattie pads timidly to the pile of craft supplies in the center of the room. A large piece of poster board liberally decorated with star stickers reads "HI MATH" in crooked crayon letters. He frowns. It's missing a "T." His fingers itch to pick up the crayon by his foot, but he doesn't want to be rude. Even though "Matthew" really isn't that hard to spell. The hot tears that threaten to breach his eyelids frustrate him even more than the poster, and he scrunches his face, clenches his little fists and tells himself Arthur can't see him cry.

The hollow thunk of his suitcase being set on the floor, the murmured, "Let me know if you need anything," from behind him, and the sound of receding footfalls finally loose the tightness in his chest. Too overwhelmed to care about mussing the neatly turned down bedspread, Mattie throws himself onto his new bed and bursts into stormy tears. For the first time, he lets go of the teddy bear in order to bury his face in his arms, muffling the sobs that eventually subside to hiccuping sniffles. When he sits up again, the cool, dim evening light coming through the window hurts his eyes, and there's a giant tear stain the size of his face on the bedspread. Mattie pulls his cuffs over his hands to wipe his eyes, then scrubs at his face, trying to rid it of the clammy feel of drying tears.

Everything seems painfully loud, even the silence. Mattie can feel, more than hear, the low vibrations of England moving around downstairs, and they resonate with his body in an inexplicably painful way. He hugs himself, drawing his knees to his chest, making himself as small as possible. His bear looks lonely and sad in a heap on the floor, but Mattie cannot convince himself to stretch out beyond his self-imposed limits, even to reach for the one thing that can keep him grounded. His body is warm, and the thought of the air wrapping around his hand if he dares move it makes him shiver. So he fixes his eyes on the forlorn animal and hopes it understands.

"I'm sorry—" His voice cracks and it's too loud in the oppressive silence, but he has to finish. "I'm sorry Kumajirou, but we have to stay here now. Francis doesn't—" He chokes on the words. They are too terrible to speak aloud.

_Francis doesn't want us anymore._

Mattie clenches his fists until it hurts, then relaxes them again, but the tightness in his chest that's creeping up his throat doesn't go away. He wants to scream, but he knows that then Arthur will come and ask questions. He wonders how much Arthur knows. Does he know about Francis? Did they tell him all the things they tried to tell Mattie? Does he think that Francis was a bad foster parent? Or does he know that it wasn't Francis' fault at all—it was Mattie's? He can't know that, though, or Mattie wouldn't be here now.

_He can't know that. Or I'll have to go again._

It's zero to one hundred. Suddenly Mattie is off the bed, on his feet. Kumajirou's paw is in his right hand, his suitcase in his left. He's not thinking, he's just moving, and he's standing in the doorway, peeking into the hallway to make sure Arthur isn't there. Arthur isn't.

"Are you running away?"

Mattie stops short, gaping. Staring curiously at him is a pair of enormous blue eyes which, despite their size, are barely visible under heavy blond fringe and the low brim of an oversized aviator's cap. An oversized t-shirt that could be a dress completes the ensemble that Mattie can only assume contains Alfred, Arthur's other foster kid, back from school.

"Hello?" The impatient singsong pulls Mattie back into the moment. "Did you hear me? I asked if you were running away."

Mattie gapes again at the boy's demanding bluntness. He doesn't see much point in lying, but his voice doesn't see much point in working at all, so he only shuts his mouth and looks defiant. He doesn't need—doesn't want—to explain himself to this tiny child who can't even spell "Matthew"—as if somehow that makes all the difference between himself and the other boy. He grips his suitcase and his bear as tightly as he can and tries to push past.

"Don't run away."

The other boy, in an attempt to keep Mattie in place, simply sticks both his hands out in front of him. And it works. Mattie's eyes widen so fast that he feels tears coming on and he blinks once, twice. His feet skid against the floor as he pushes at the two tiny palms pressed against his scrawny torso, but his opponent remains unmoved. Bafflement turns suddenly to overwhelming anxiety, and Mattie steps back, dropping his suitcase and clutching Kumajirou to himself for protection.

"Alfred!" Arthur's voice breaks the standoff, and Mattie looks up, more relieved than he thought he could be to see his new guardian.

Alfred spins around to face the much taller man. He's easily three feet shorter than Arthur, but from the way he holds himself, you'd think he was on eye level with him. Matthew expects Arthur to scold Alfred—he seems that kind of person—but the man only sighs and runs a hand through his rumpled hair, as if he knows there wouldn't be much point. He looks from Alfred to Mattie, eyebrows once more knitted in concern.

"Matthew, this is Alfred."

Alfred scrunches up his face in annoyance. "Don't call me Alfred. That's an old grandpa name. Call me Al."

Mattie chafes at Al's demanding tone, but he also rather envies the other boy's bravery. It's not that he minds "Matthew," but he'd rather be called Mattie. Everybody calls him Mattie. Only one person ever called him Matthew, and it doesn't sound the same without the click of the "t" and the gentle lilt at the end. When Arthur says it, it sounds dull and plain and ordinary. When Francis said his name it made him feel special.

Arthur sees that Mattie isn't going to say anything, and doesn't see much point in trying to convince him otherwise. He sighs heavily once more. He could use another cup of tea. And a couple aspirin.

"You two get to know each other. Al, don't cause any trouble. Dinner will be in an hour."

Mattie eyes Al warily as Arthur's steps sound heavily down the stairs. The other boy remains unperturbed. He saunters into the room, pulling off the giant aviator's cap and tossing it onto his bed. Then he plops down on the floor and picks up a crayon, surveying the half-finished banner before him with a critical eye.

"Sorry I didn't finish your sign."

Mattie doesn't reply. Al looks at him expectantly until he shrugs self-consciously and mumbles something noncommittal.

"Do you like it so far?"

Mattie shrugs again, climbs back onto his bed, taking Kumajirou with him and hoping that Al will stop talking.

"Matthew?"

Mattie ignores him and hugs Kumajirou tighter.

"Did you hear me?"

 _Yes. Shut up._ Francis always told him that "shut up" was a bad thing to say, but Francis isn't here.

"I asked you if you liked your sign."

Mattie feels like he might explode. He clenches his fists and counts to ten like Francis taught him.

"It's nice," he says at last.

Al looks startled, like he didn't actually expect Mattie to speak. The shock wears off within seconds though, and he frowns. "What's wrong with it?"

It's Matthew's turn to be surprised. For some reason he assumed that Al was a little bit dumb, that it would be easy to lie to him, like it was with most little kids. Now he doesn't know what to say.

"Why don't you like it?" Al persists, "What's wrong?"

Mattie has had enough. Al might keep talking even if he answers, but he definitely won't stop if Mattie keeps ignoring him. "You forgot a 't'" he says frigidly.

"Huh?"

"There are two t's in 'Matthew'" He can barely speak through the strain of frustration.

"Dammit!"

Mattie's eyes almost pop out of his head, and he shrinks even further into himself, trying to hide behind Kumajirou. Kids at the foster home got in trouble if they cursed, and Francis always told him cursing was "low" and "vulgar." He's still not sure exactly what that meant, but it didn't sound good, and he didn't ever want Francis to say it about him. Francis would say it about Alfred. Francis wouldn't want him to be here.

"Fixed it!"

Al's excited cry breaks through Mattie's reverie, and he peeks over Kumajirou's head to see a skinny lower-case "t" squeezed onto the poster. The other letters are bigger and upper-case; it makes his head hurt to look at it now, maybe even more than when it was spelled wrong. Mattie barely manages a weak nod, but that seems to satisfy Al, who puts down the crayon—Mattie won't bother trying to tell him he still hasn't actually finished spelling his name—only to start fiddling with the clasps of Mattie's suitcase. Mattie lets out a muffled, inarticulate shriek, and Al looks up at him, alarmed.

"Don't you wanna unpack?"

"No."

Mattie's coldest voice—rarely used—had been known to silence kids twice his age at the foster home, but Al remains blithely unaffected.

"Why not?"

Mattie's patience has run out, and even if he thought he could get his voice to work, he really doesn't want to. So, somewhere between angry and incredibly anxious, he flings himself face first into the bed pillows, using Kumajirou as a wall between himself and the perplexed boy on the floor. He remains thus for the remainder of the hour, until Arthur comes upstairs and announces dinner.

Alfred shoots up from the midst of his legos the moment the word "dinner" passes Arthur's lips, and he's gone before Mattie even lifts his face from the pillow. Mattie looks blearily at Arthur's silhouette in the doorway, awaiting his next move. He remembers the time that he and Francis tried to take in a stray dog, and he thinks he understands now why the dog would hang back from them when they offered him food, even if he was hungry.

"Will you come down for dinner, Matthew?"

Mattie wishes he could speak. He wishes he could move. He wishes he could do anything but stare warily at his new guardian. He's hungry but somehow embarrassed, anxious but somehow angry, fragile but extremely stubborn. And if he moves or speaks, somehow, he loses. So he stares fixedly at Arthur until his new guardian sighs, runs a hand through his hair, turns, and closes the door behind him, leaving it open a crack so that a sliver of light from the hallway can beam warmly through. The contrast with the darkness irritates Mattie, however, and as soon as Arthur's footsteps fade away, he pads to the door and gently shuts it all the way. He leans momentarily against the door, closing his eyes and breathing in the darkness, but the aging wood creaks when he puts too much of his weight against it, and he leaps away, heart pounding irrationally at the sound. The bed is the only safe place, Kumajirou his only protection, and he curls up on the bed and finally sleeps for what feels like the first time in ages.

He dreams of summer days and laughter and blond hair shining in the sunlight. He dreams of rain and tears and his tiny palm pressed against the window of the backseat of the car that takes him away from the only person who ever loved him. He dreams of eavesdropping and whispers he doesn't understand and sympathetic glances that make him want to scream but also cry. He dreams of sparkling blue eyes that become cold and distant and turn away from him, and he wakes with an inaudible gasp.

He can feel tears on his face, and there's an uncomfortable cold dampness on the pillow around his ears, but he doesn't dare move to dry them, because he can also hear a rustling and occasional bump on the other side of the room that he assumes must be Alfred getting ready for bed. So he waits, completely still, until he hears the creak of bedsprings and the contented sigh of the other boy drifting off to sleep.

The absence of watchful eyes and the cover of darkness set Mattie free. His muscles loosen and the lump in his throat dissolves. His heart pounds and he feels awake and resolute. Gingerly, he sits up. Swiftly, he swings his legs over the side of the bed and slips to the floor, landing lightly. Alfred does not stir.

He keeps close to his own side of the room, remembering the treacherous expanse of legos strewn across the floor, and skims his hands an inch or so above the hardwood until he makes contact with his suitcase. Then he feels along its perimeter until he locates the handle. He stands, wincing at the little pop when he straightens his knees and holding his breath every time he feels the low moan of the floorboards shifting. Grabbing Kumajirou—around his middle, so as not to drag him on the floor—he slips to the door. The light in the hallway is off now, as is the light downstairs. Arthur must be an early-to-bed kind of person. All the better for Mattie. He doesn't know exactly where he's going, but if his time with Francis taught him anything, it's that he's going to have to go eventually. So he's going now.

He makes his way down the stairs, struggling to keep both Kumajirou and his suitcase from dragging. It's a delicate balancing act, lifting first one, then the other as they begin to sag lower and lower in his tiny arms. The most challenging thing, however, is that in order to keep them off the ground, he must hold them up in front of his face, so he steps very carefully, feeling for the next step with his front foot before putting his weight on it. He almost makes it. The landing comes sooner than he expects, and his left foot stops abruptly, the unanticipated shock throwing him off balance. He falls backwards, sitting down hard on the last step and letting go of his suitcase, which lands on the hardwood floor and slides a foot or two with an abrasive shush.

Mattie holds his breath, swallowing a cry of surprise and pain. He hears the cautious tread of someone upstairs in the dark and awaits the appearance of Arthur, who will ask him what he's doing and escort him back to bed with worried looks and scoldings. Some part of his brain urges him to run, but he's paralyzed, still winded from his fall. He stares at the front door only a few yards from the landing; it seems to be laughing at him, and tears spring unbidden to his eyes at the unfairness of it all. He feels footsteps descending, but they're too light to be Arthur's.

"You are running away."

Mattie turns reflexively to face the new arrival. Alfred stands one stair above where Mattie is sitting, rubbing his eyes. His hair sticks up in all directions and a slight glow surrounds him from the white oversized t-shirt he wears as pajamas. Mattie is glad it's not Arthur, but he is by no means pleased to see Al, and he refuses to answer, which—not surprisingly at this point—does nothing to deter the other boy.

"I betcha thought I was A—" he yawns, extending the vowel for a second or two, "Arthur."

Mattie remains silent. Alfred's propensity for spelling out every little thing gets on his nerves, and Francis always told him: "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

"Arthur takes medicine before he goes to bed," Al continues, "Otherwise he wouldn't sleep at all. A—" He pauses momentarily, as though thinking deeply. "An alien invasion couldn't wake him up!" He nods, pleased with his hyperbolic skills.

Well, that was useful to know. If he couldn't make it out tonight, Mattie could probably try again. Provided he didn't lose his nerve and Alfred didn't tell on him…

"Matthew?" Al's voice was softer than Mattie had yet heard it, neither contentious nor demanding—almost forlorn. "Why are you running away?"

Al's voice reminds Mattie of something, something he's heard before, something that makes him unbearably sad. In his mind's eye he sees a sudden flash of blue eyes swimming with unshed tears and gentle hands working free of his own tiny death grip. It's his own voice he's hearing.

_Papa, why do I have to go? Papa, don't let them take me!_

Then the words that cut like a knife to the center of his child's soul: _I am not your Papa, Mathieu. You have to go now._

He speaks almost without thinking. "You can call me Mattie."

Al looks at him with something akin to wonder and perhaps even gratitude.

"Okay Mattie," he says, testing the name and smiling when he finds he likes the sound of it. He sits down on the step with Mattie, perching on the edge, ready to leap up again should the other boy recoil.

Mattie tenses involuntarily at Al's nearness, but he doesn't object. They sit in silence for a long time. Maybe Al is too sleepy to pester him, or maybe he senses that now is not the time, but he doesn't repeat the question that Mattie nevertheless rolls over and over again in his mind. Why is he running away? Unprompted, after almost ten minutes of total silence interrupted only by the sounds of an old house at night, Mattie begins to talk.

"I don't belong here. I have to go back home."

Al tilts his head. "I thought this was your home now."

"This is a mistake."

Mattie doesn't mean for it to happen, but his voice grows cold, and Al shrinks away from him.

"Do you mean you want to go back to the foster home?" His eyes are wide and his voice barely more than a whisper.

Mattie hugs himself and draws his knees into his body. "I want to go back to my Papa."

Al frowns, totally bewildered. "Why are you in foster care if you have a dad?"

He doesn't want to answer this question. He can't answer this question. His throat constricts so he can barely breathe, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide forever, but Al is looking expectantly at him, confusion written all over his face, and he's started this; he's going to finish if it kills him.

"Francis isn't—" His voice, barely a squeak as it is, cracks as he tries to get the words out. "He's not really my dad."

Al nods slowly, uncertainly, trying to look as though he understands. Mattie takes a deep breath and continues.

"He's my foster dad, but he's like my real dad. I have to go back to him. He sent me away. But I can be better. I can!"

He can't help it now; he breaks off, keening softly and clutching Kumajirou to himself.

Silence, then, "What did you do?" Al asks, timidly, breathlessly, afraid to ask and afraid to hear the answer.

"I don't know," Mattie whispers, and it's not even like he's replying to Al's question, but like a desperate plea into the darkness for the answer he can't give. "I don't know.

"He was my foster dad as long as I can remember. He took me to the park and carried me on his shoulders and bought me toys and candy and I loved him so much. Then one day he was so sad and his eyes stopped shining and he locked his bedroom door and wouldn't let me in. When he came out he was still sad and he wouldn't smile at me and he didn't give me piggy-back and sometimes he would forget to buy food at all. And I wanted to fix all the problems but I was too little.

"Then one day he came out of his room and his eyes were shiny again and he took me to the park and bought me loads of new toys and made all my favorite foods and he was fun and happy again. He smiled at me all the time and laughed at everything and called me his little _Mathieu_ and said he wanted to adopt me and be my papa forever and ever. He went to the foster home and came back with a stack of papers and started writing on them right away, but he never finished, because one day he got sad again and when I asked him if I was adopted yet he said no and locked his bedroom door again.

"After that he called the foster home and talked for a long time in his room. When he came out he said he couldn't be my papa and I had to go, but he wouldn't tell me why."

Here Mattie abruptly stops. The lump in his throat is enormous, and he has told the story almost without breathing, as if he had to say it all at once or not at all. He takes a long, shaking breath, and Al sits next to him in stunned silence. The air is charged with confusion and unshed tears; Alfred, though he does not understand half of what he just heard, wants desperately to cry, for Mattie does not seem able to. He feels tears pooling in the corners of his wide, shining eyes, and his lower lip trembles. But he knows, small and innocent as he is, that he has to be strong right now. So he bites his lip to stop it shaking and blinks back the tears.

"I don't think it was your fault," he offers at last, the only words of comfort he can muster. He honestly doesn't know if it was Mattie's fault; he just knows somehow that's what he needs to hear.

Al waits for a response but Mattie's words are spent. He cannot reply, nor does he want to. He only wants to leave. He wants to go back to Francis and do whatever it takes to make him smile and want to be his papa again. His eyes turn steely and his jaw sets stubbornly. He grips Kumajirou in his right hand, his suitcase in his left, and stands up on shaking legs. Al bolts upright immediately after he does. He doesn't ask if Mattie is going. He doesn't tell him not to go.

"Promise you won't leave until I get back," he says, then scrambles up the stairs, almost tripping over his t-shirt in the process.

Mattie waits, obeying without thinking. His legs don't feel ready to move. Gravity is an unconquerable weight on his body, and he squeezes Kumajirou's paw as tightly as he can and puts all his willpower into staying upright. Because if he sits down, he won't get up again. He'll stay here. He can't stay here.

Alfred is back. He's wearing that ridiculous aviator's cap again and has on his tiny backpack, which he has emptied of school supplies and filled with clothes and snacks that he hides away under his bed for emergencies.

"If you're going," he says, "I'm coming with you."

For what feels like the thousandth time, Mattie gapes at Al. He shuts his mouth and frowns, then opens it again, but no sound comes out. The other boy's jaw is set and there's a stubborn gleam in his eyes that Mattie doesn't want to test, but he has to. With nothing left to do, he finally takes the fateful steps down the hallway, past the mismatched sitting room and the kitchen full of mugs. He pauses at the door, hand on the knob; Al is only a few steps behind him. He eases open the door and slips out, then turns and stands on the front step, looking into the house at Al, who doesn't hesitate before following him outside and shutting the door behind them. Mattie stares. Al only looks back at him with a wide, questioning look as if to say, "Where to now?"

Mattie doesn't know where. He doesn't know what he's doing or how he's going to do it. It all seemed so much clearer before he stepped out the door, before he had a companion looking at him with those big, questioning eyes. He hadn't planned on company, of course, but somehow he isn't angry with Alfred. He feels lost and confused, and he finds himself wishing that instead of Al looking at him to lead the way, it could be the other way around.

"I ran away once."

Mattie is so stunned that someone could knock him over with a feather. Had Al somehow read his mind? In his surprise, the lump in his throat disappears and an incredulous "Really?" escapes his lips.

Al nods.

"After I started living with Arthur. Before, I was by myself, with the nice people on the streets who took care of me sometimes. The foster home people found me and made me come with them. Arthur came a little after that. He took me home and I broke a teacup and he didn't yell but I knew he was mad. So I ran away because I didn't want to break any more teacups and make him mad. There aren't teacups on the streets.

"Then I met a policeman who asked me why I was running away. He told me that Arthur didn't care about the teacup and that he would worry because I ran away. He said Arthur wants to take care of me and as long as he wasn't bad I should stay. Then he took me home and Arthur yelled a little bit but mostly he hugged me and said it was okay about the teacup."

Al trails off. Mattie's face is screwed up in thought. He sits down so he can think better and Al follows suit, waiting for Mattie to say something.

"If Arthur is so nice, why do you want to come with me?" he finally asks.

"Arthur is nice," Al replies, "But he can't be my friend. He's a grown up. You're a kid like me." He looks down as he swings his little legs against the concrete step. "I hated the foster home. But I miss playing with other kids. When Arthur told me you were coming, I was so excited, I couldn't sleep for a week! I don't want you to go before we get to be friends.

"Also, since I ran away before, you probably need me to help you run away and find Francis."

Mattie mulls all this over. "Do you know where Francis lives?" he asks.

"Huh, no," Al scoffs, "I thought you knew."

"I know what his house looks like," Mattie offers, "It's blue."

Al frowns. "There are lots of blue houses," he points out.

Mattie's face falls. He hadn't thought of that. There are a lot of things he hasn't thought of, he realizes. The next thing he realizes is that he's so very tired. The street in front of him is big and dark. The house behind him is small and cozy, safe for crayons and broken teacups. There is a bed there. And a friend.

"Al," he murmurs.

"U-huh?"

"I don't want to run away tonight."

Al's whole face lights up.

"Good!" he exclaims, then lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "I'm kinda too tired to run away tonight."

The smallest of smiles cracks on Mattie's face. "Me too," he whispers back.

"Anyway," Al remarks as he opens the door and they walk back into the house, "We can always run away on Monday so we don't have to go to school."

Mattie is too tired to laugh, but he feels like if he weren't, he might just be able to manage a mischievous giggle.

They clamber as quietly as they can back up the stairs. Mattie finally opens his suitcase, extracting a large white t-shirt like Alfred's. It must be a foster home thing, he thinks. He pulls it on, then climbs into bed. To his surprise and slight discomfort, Al climbs in with him.

"I want to give you these," Al whispers seriously, "for when we do run away."

He hands Mattie the aviator's goggles from the top of the cap he's still wearing.

"Every adventurer needs something cool like goggles or a hat."

Mattie accepts the goggles. Their weight in his hand makes him feel warm inside. Carefully, almost reverently, he puts them on so they rest neatly in his tousled thatch of hair. Al smiles with satisfaction.

. . .

In the morning, Arthur finds his two tiny charges asleep in Matthew's bed, Alfred's head on Mattie's chest and Mattie sunken into the great mass of fluff that is Kumajirou. The low brim of the too-big aviator's cap hides Al's fluttering eyelids, and Mattie's goggles have slipped down so they rest awkwardly on his hairline. But they're both sleeping peacefully, and that gives Arthur his own deep sense of peace and even gratitude.

He doesn't know what challenges lie ahead for their little family. The foster care organization told him that Matthew's last guardian had been severely depressed and borderline negligent. He doesn't know that, at this point, Mattie still isn't planning to stay very long. He doesn't know that Alfred may be the only thing to serve as an anchor for him. But he does know that he wants to do whatever he can to fix these children's lives and make them happy. He knows that he will love them as best he can.

In a few minutes they will awake, and the house will be filled with Alfred's shenanigans and Mattie's quiet wonder. They will sit and eat a leisurely weekend breakfast of eggs and sausage and scones. He will drink tea, they will drink orange juice. Mattie will break a teacup, and everything will be all right.


	2. Chapter 2

Time is a funny thing, Mattie decides one day as he stands in Arthur's kitchen, looking up at the calendar that hangs on the wall. Every day he wakes up and tells himself that this is the last day, that he never meant to stay this long and that he needs to go. Every day he checks under his bed to make sure his suitcase is still there. He's taken it out so many times that it hasn't even started to gather dust yet. He's opened it, he's even started packing once or twice. But then he hears Arthur calling him for dinner or Alfred tripping up the stairs and he slips the case back under his bed and promises himself: tomorrow. One hundred-odd tomorrows later he's still standing in Arthur's kitchen, and next tomorrow is his seventh birthday.

He shakes his head and looks away from the calendar; it's making him feel strange. As he thinks about these past three—almost four—months, he feels like he should want to go, to have been gone, but as he looks around the room that has become so familiar to him, that desire fades a little bit. Little things around him speak of a house that has now become a home. A mug of his very own on the counter next to Arthur's teapot. Three chairs at the table and a stepladder for reaching the cupboards when he dries the dishes. A mostly-finished crayon drawing of Kumajirou on the counter, two report-cards on the refrigerator, and a small pencil notch labelled "Matthew" on the inside of the doorway, only slightly lower than the one marked "Alfred."

Alfred. Mattie touches the goggles on the top of his head almost without thinking. He never takes them off, except when Arthur makes him, at bath time. They make him feel warm and brave inside. Al said they were for adventurers, for running away, but for some reason they make him want to stay. Sometimes he thinks that maybe that means he should take them off, but he doesn't want to. They remind him of Al. Al who is too loud and too clumsy and too impulsive but somehow reassuring. Al who promised to go with him when he went to find Francis. Al who would drop everything if Mattie said now was the time. Al who is always fighting with Arthur but loves him anyway, and would miss him if he left. Sometimes Mattie feels bad that he doesn't really care how Arthur would feel if he ran away, but on the days when it's all too much and the words "let's go" are on the tip of his tongue, he sees Al running to tell Arthur all about his day—whether Arthur is listening or not—and he swallows the words, straightens his goggles, and tells himself he can wait one more day.

Today, however, he knows he has to stay for Arthur. He knows that Arthur has been working hard so he can take the day off for his birthday tomorrow, and that he has a special day planned, and Mattie is excited for that, in spite of himself. He's also anxious for his birthday to come so that Al will stop shutting him out of their room. Al says he's working on Mattie's birthday present, and more often than not, Mattie opens the door only to have it slammed back in his face. That's why he's standing in the kitchen now, looking at the calendar, and wondering if he really wants to leave...

He shakes himself. Of course he wants to leave. He climbs up on his stool, pulls a blank piece of paper out from under the Kumajirou drawing, selects the prettiest blue crayon he has and begins to draw. After only a moment he takes the piece of paper and crumples it up. He pulls out another, but it follows its predecessor only seconds later. He tries again. Still dissatisfied, he scribbles violently across the whole page, then drops his head into his arms and bursts into tears.

"Hey Mattie, can you tell me how to spell your name again? I forg-What's wrong?"

Al appears in the kitchen doorway. He's got star stickers in his hair and mottled watercolor up to his elbows and all over his t-shirt. He looks like ground zero of an arts and crafts bomb, but when he sees Mattie's tears, he drops the marker in his hand and he's nothing but a little boy who can't bear to watch his brother cry. He rushes to clamber up onto the stool next to Mattie, where he sits perched on the edge of the seat, longing to wrap him in the biggest hug his little arms can manage, but knowing by now that Mattie doesn't want to be touched. So he hovers a few inches from the other boy's heaving shoulders and waits for his sobs to subside a little, even though each teary gasp twists his stomach and makes his chest ache.

"Mattie," he ventures finally.

The only response he gets is a shuddering sniffle.

"Mattie, what's wrong?"

Mattie lifts his head and scrubs his eyes with the heels of his hands

"I can't—" he begins, tears springing anew, "I—I can't remember."

"Can't remember what?"

Mattie takes another shuddering breath, but can't find his voice.

"What can't you remember, Mattie?"

Mattie tries a moment more to control himself, but Al's gentle voice undoes him.

"I can't remember what Francis' eyes look like!" he wails, and breaks once more into brokenhearted sobbing.

Al bites his lip and blinks back the tears that threaten at the corners of his own eyes. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to keep away Mattie's sadness for long. Last week it was the stray dog they saw in the park. The week before that it was the candy that Arthur had brought home for a treat—the same kind Francis used to buy, apparently. In the last weeks of school it was the book the teacher had read aloud where the little boy called his father "Papa." It makes Al angry, but there's nothing he can do. The whole world is full of things that make Mattie sad, and Al can't fight the whole world. Instead he reaches out with a tentative hand to touch Mattie's shoulder, and Mattie doesn't shake him off.

"It's okay Mattie," Al murmurs, "You'll see Francis again one day. We'll find him."

Mattie's tears cease with a small sharp gasp. He looks up suddenly at Al, and his eyes shine with more than tears; they burn with a manic desperation that Al doesn't understand but fears all the same.

"Today," he whispers, "Let's go now."

The words themselves are confident and decisive, but Mattie's voice shakes with an undercurrent of doubt and an overwhelming desire for direction. Even as he speaks, some part of him hopes that Al will forbid him to go. But Al hears only the words—he cannot hear Mattie's unspoken plea for his guidance—and he's paralyzed, standing and watching Mattie walk the edge of a cliff, unable to call him back, unaware that the other boy is just as terrified of falling as he is of losing him. He doesn't know what to say—if there is anything he can say—and when he looks at the goggles perched on top of Mattie's head, he remembers the promise he made on that first night and wonders if he even has the right to ask him to stay.

 _Okay._ The word sits heavy on the tip of his tongue. _Okay, let's go._

Time stands still, as if everything hinges on this one moment, and the whole of their tiny world is holding its breath, waiting.

"Alfred, did you remember to put your paints away this—Matthew! What happened?"

Arthur stands in the doorway and the moment has passed. The look of exhaustion overlaid with concern that seems always to haunt his face to one degree or another intensifies as he rushes to Mattie's side and begins to interrogate him. Mattie doesn't understand why after all these months, Arthur still asks him questions. It's not that he doesn't want to answer, but Arthur always asks so many at once that he gets confused and his voice stops working. He doesn't know what Arthur wants to hear, and he doesn't really trust that his guardian can help him anyway, so he forgoes speech and answers what questions he can with a nod or a shake of his head.

"Are you all right?" Nod. "Are you hurt?" Shake. "Do you feel sick?" Shake. "Did Alfred do something?" Vehement shake. "Then what's wrong?" Silence.

"Alfred what happened?"

Despite Mattie's assurance that Al didn't do anything, Arthur's voice still has a slightly accusatory ring to it. Al glowers and clenches his fists, and Mattie hunches his shoulders, folding in on himself a little bit. He wishes he could speak. He wishes he could make Arthur listen. If he could, maybe Al and Arthur wouldn't fight so much. He wonders if they fought like this before he came and made them worry.

"I was trying to help, Arthur," Al insists fiercely, "I was making it better."

Mattie doesn't know that he would go that far. Al hadn't exactly said anything for several minutes before Arthur arrived. But it works. Arthur sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

"I know you were," he assures Al wearily, resting a hand on the boy's head, "I'm sorry."

Al leans into his touch and the sudden peace hurts Mattie just as much as the strife did. Part of him longs to have Arthur's hand rest gently in his hair as it does in Al's, but he knows that if Arthur tried, he would shrink away from his touch, and Arthur wouldn't say anything, only withdraw his hand with another heavy sigh. He feels his eyes begin to swim with tears again and he looks away from the other two, casting around for a means of escape. His gaze falls on the Kumajirou drawing, and he picks it up, stifling his tears and turning back to face Arthur.

"I couldn't get my drawing of Kumajirou right."

He timidly offers the paper for Arthur's consideration. The glance Al throws him is too brief to see the mingled relief and concern it holds. Neither boy is particularly bothered by the relatively harmless lie. It's not the lie that hurts. Arthur takes the drawing with a smile that doesn't quite conceal the relief in his eyes.

"But this is a fine drawing, Matthew," he says with surprise, "What did you think was wrong with it?"

Mattie looks down at his hands. Nothing is wrong with that picture. He's actually quite proud of it.

"He didn't think he had gotten the eyes right." Al speaks up for him, but his voice comes out slightly strained.

Arthur gives him a curious look before examining the picture more closely.

"Well I think they're excellent eyes." His words are warm and reassuring. "They really make it look like Kumajirou. Would you let me hang it on the refrigerator?"

Mattie squeezes his eyes shut against the tears and hugs himself tightly. He can't look at Arthur, but he nods once. Arthur goes to rest his hand briefly on Mattie's head, as he did with Al, but thinks better of it, walks quickly across the room, and fixes the drawing to the refrigerator door with a magnet shaped like a maple leaf.

"There," he says, "We've got our very own art gallery."

Mattie can't quite smile, but he dries his eyes and nods. He's a little bit pleased, in spite of himself, to see his picture hanging there next to his straight-A report card.

It's there again, that strange feeling of being at home. The same feeling he gets when he touches the goggles on the top of his head or sees the lines on the door frame that mark the couple inches he's grown since his arrival. He remembers the times Francis was too busy or too sad to look at his pictures, the golden stars he used to miss getting on his schoolwork in kindergarten because Francis forgot to take him to school, the day Francis suddenly realized that Mattie had grown four or five inches and all his clothes were too small. Arthur never forgets to walk them to the bus stop. Arthur measures them every two weeks, and every two weeks says, "Well look how you've grown!" Arthur hangs Mattie's pictures on the refrigerator. Arthur works long hours every day in his office upstairs, but always comes down to make them dinner every night. Arthur has planned a special day for Mattie's birthday tomorrow, and at least for tomorrow, Mattie needs to stay.

"Alfred, if you haven't put away your paints, I need you to do that before dinner."

Al hops off his stool and the real world resumes its turning. Mattie shakes himself slightly and follows suit. He doesn't see the look Arthur sends after him as he follows Al to the stairs: a sad look, and a helpless one. True, Matthew seems to have calmed down; he isn't crying anymore. But Arthur suspects that this is due more to the boy's own self-control than anything he did. He can't breach the wall Matthew has put up around himself, and Matthew won't take it down. For Arthur, the picture on the refrigerator, the marks on the door frame—these things are so small, almost insignificant. He doesn't know their importance. If he did, perhaps he wouldn't be so hard on himself.

But he doesn't know. Nor does he hear Mattie's murmured words to Al as they climb the stairs together.

"I don't want to go today."

Al feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off of him, but he struggles not to show it as he replies: "That's good. Because if you went today, you wouldn't be able to get my awesome present!"

. . .

Mattie wakes suddenly the next morning when Al jumps on him, shouting, "It's your birthday! It's your birthday!" Apparently Al's normal hesitation to touch, shout at, or otherwise startle Mattie does not apply on birthdays.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

Mattie rubs his eyes and rolls over.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Al."

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Al, I'm awake."

"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"

"Please stop jumping on me," Mattie pleads, but to no avail.

"Wake up, wake up, wake u—"

"Alfred!"

Salvation arrives in the form of Arthur, standing in their bedroom doorway wearing a dressing gown and a stern look. He crosses the room and lifts Al bodily from on top of Mattie and sets him on the floor. He looks down at the miscreant for a long minute, but he can't quite find the words to scold him for his exuberance, so he turns instead to the lump of blanket that is Mattie.

"Are you all right, Matthew?"

Mattie pokes his head out from under the covers, where he took refuge the moment Arthur arrived.

"Yes," he says in a small voice.

Arthur sighs, and his hair is already so mussed from sleeping that when he runs his hand through it, it hardly makes a difference. His eyebrows look even bigger than usual, looming over eyes that squint in the morning light, and Mattie almost wants to laugh.

"All right then. Alfred, please apologize to Matthew for jumping on him, and then you can both come down for breakfast."

Apologies and forgiveness come easily, as neither party is actually hurt or offended, and Al rushes down the stairs to the kitchen, followed a few moments later by Mattie.

Arthur is standing at the island counter whisking pancake batter and looking more relaxed than he has in weeks—maybe even months. His face is free from its usual concerned frown, and without it, it's possible to distinguish his eyebrows from each other. He smiles at the boys in their oversized white t-shirts as they arrive. Al scampers right up to him and peers over the edge of the counter to see what he's doing. Mattie hangs back a little bit, watching from a distance, but the sound of butter sizzling in a pan on the stove and the smell of sausages cooking in another make him unimaginably happy. He pads to the refrigerator, and Arthur turns to see him holding a jug of maple syrup almost as big as his head with a hopeful look in his eyes.

Arthur laughs. "Yes, of course, Matthew, you can have maple syrup."

Al is partial to butter and jam on his pancakes, but when he found out that Mattie preferred maple syrup, he pestered and made a general hullabaloo until Arthur bought some. Mattie never asks Arthur for anything if he can help it. He never asks Al to ask for him either, and whenever Al goes to Arthur on his behalf, his stomach squirms and his face turns red. But he was so pleased when Arthur returned from the store with the syrup that he didn't mind so much that time.

Breakfast proceeds almost free of incident, except for when Alfred stands too close to Arthur while he's cooking the pancakes and he burns his nose peeking over the edge. Arthur scolds and laughs a little bit, Mattie runs for an ice pack, and Al scrunches his face and doesn't cry because he's brave.

After breakfast, Arthur sends them upstairs to get dressed. Al puts on his usual day-time oversized t-shirt and Mattie puts on shorts and his favorite red hoodie, even though it's now July. It's comfortable, and the long sleeves make him feel a bit safer, especially since Arthur told him he shouldn't bring Kumajirou out with them today. Al dons his aviator's cap, Mattie his goggles, and they tumble down the stairs to where Arthur is waiting with the car keys and a grocery tote full of unidentified objects which Al immediately began clamoring to see. Arthur lifts the bag out of reach and shepherds the boys out the door to the car. Al, just a few days shy of his own birthday, begs Arthur to let him sit in the front seat because after all he's almost eight and he's grown so much and please Arthur, just this once. Arthur only points firmly at the back seat where Mattie is already buckled up, and Al reluctantly clambers in.

"All right," Arthur says as he slips into the driver's seat, "It's going to be a bit of a drive, so before we get on the road, I've got something for Matthew. Don't worry, Alfred," he cuts off Al's indignant protest, "You can both enjoy it."

He hands Mattie a brightly wrapped present a little bigger and heavier than an average CD case. Mattie takes it and begins unwrapping it, carefully sliding his finger under each piece of tape and neatly unfolding each crease so as not to rip the paper. Next to him, Al bounces with impatience, but Mattie continues at the same meticulous pace until a perfect square of wrapping paper is sitting on the seat beside him as he examines his birthday gift.

"It's the first _Harry Potter_ book on CD," Arthur explains, "I thought we could listen to it while we're in the car."

Mattie doesn't say anything. He can barely manage a shy smile. But his eyes are shining and he feels that same strange warmth in his chest that his goggles give him. He never told Arthur, of course, but he loves to read. Once when he was in kindergarten, the teacher read them _The Velveteen Rabbit_ , and he loved it so much that she gave him a copy for his very own. He read it constantly—sometimes four or five times a day when Francis was sad and he was alone. He loved to tell himself, time and time again, the story of a shy little toy who was loved so much and so deeply that nothing bad could ever happen to him. He stopped reading it when Francis sent him back to the foster home—he couldn't quite bring himself to throw it away—and instead found a fanciful escape in _The Wizard of Oz_ , given to him by a girl who had read it so many times she had memorized it. He still has both books; they are two of the few things that he brought with him when he came to live with Arthur. _The Velveteen Rabbit_ is still sitting in the suitcase under his bed, but _The Wizard of Oz_ he keeps under his pillow for the days when he needs an escape. A book as a gift means more to him than he can possibly say, and he feels as though his little heart might burst from the warmth flooding it. He doesn't even notice Al throw himself back in his seat and huff that, fine, he guesses he can listen to a story. Arthur takes the case and slips the first CD into the deck, and Mattie is enchanted from the very first words. He has always loved stories about magic, and when they arrive at their destination, he almost doesn't want to get out of the car, so anxious is he to find out who is sending Harry the mysterious magical letters. He hopes that whoever it is will take Harry away from his aunt and uncle and bring him to somebody who loves him…

"Come along, Matthew." Arthur is holding the car door open. "We can listen to more on the way home."

Matthew climbs from the car in a fantastic daze, only to be assailed by a flood of colors, sounds and smells. They're parallel parked with the ocean on their right and a bustling boardwalk on their left. Al is jumping up and down, running a few feet in one direction, then in another, whooping and laughing and shouting "Look Arthur, look! Look Arthur," until he almost trips over his t-shirt and decides that it may be safer to stand still. Arthur ignores him and squats down in front of Mattie so he's on eye level with him.

"I thought this would be a good place to celebrate your birthday. We can go to the beach, or there are a lot of fun things we can do on the boardwalk. Your choice."

Mattie looks to his left and right at his two options. The boardwalk is colorful and exciting, but it's also full of people. The beach is practically empty at noon on a Wednesday, the sand and the water stretch out further than his eye can see, and the rhythmic rush of the waves calls soothingly to him over the bustle of the street. He points shyly towards the ocean. Arthur smiles.

"Okay," he says.

He stands up and opens the car door, taking out the mysterious grocery tote.

"Your swimsuits are in here. We'll go to that bathhouse and you can change before we go down to the beach.

"Come on, Alfred, let's go," he calls, summoning the boy from where he is standing engrossed in watching a street vendor spin cotton candy.

"Coming," Al replies, taking one last, longing look at the giant pink cloud the vendor is handing to a pair of teenage girls before trotting back to join Mattie and Arthur and whispering to Mattie, "Where are we going?"

"To the beach," Mattie murmurs back.

Alfred gives a great whoop and tries to sprint ahead, but Arthur grabs his arm as he bolts past.

"Stay close, Alfred," he warns, holding onto him gently, but firmly, "There are a lot of people here, and I don't want you getting lost."

Al makes a face and wrestles free of Arthur's grip, but slows his pace to match that of his guardian. Mattie speeds up a little bit until he falls in step with them. Al is running his mouth at a mile a minute, telling Arthur the myriad of things he's somehow seen so far, but by now Mattie is good at tuning out Al's chatter. He's too entranced by the ocean to pay much attention anyway.

Mattie has never been to the ocean. Francis used to take him to the pool, and he thinks he vaguely remembers a day-trip to a nearby lake once during the summer he turned four, but the ocean is something totally different. It's bigger than anything he's ever seen in his life, and he thinks maybe he ought to be afraid of it, but somehow he isn't. He just wonders what makes the waves do that: how they roll in and out like that without anything pushing or pulling them. He wonders why they make such a loud, low rumble when they look so soft. He wonders if the water is cold or warm, and he wonders if it really tastes as salty as people say. He thinks it must be, because he's not sure whether he's tasting it or smelling it, but there seems to be salt just hanging in the air, which is somehow wet without being humid. A cool breeze whips his hair up and around and into his face—one particularly stubborn curl won't get out of his mouth—and the cry of the seagulls and the sparkle of sunlight on the waves combine with all his other thoughts and sensations to create something so much more impressive than anything he could have ever imagined. Then they arrive at the tiny bathhouse, the door to the men's room closes behind them with a heavy _thunk_ , and Mattie has to fight the urge to rush back out and make sure that the ocean is still there, so different does the world seem inside four walls.

But the ocean is still there after the boys put on their swim trunks and Arthur has slathered them in sunscreen, and when they step back outside it seems—if possible—even more marvelous than before. It makes Mattie want to run towards it like nothing else in a very long time. Yet at the same time, he's afraid that when he gets there, it won't be as beautiful as it looks from far away. So while Al goes whooping down the path to the sand—ignoring Arthur's pleas that he wait and please for the love of God be careful—Mattie hangs back, biting his lip and looking nervously at Arthur, expecting him to scold and tell him to hurry up. Arthur doesn't.

"Alfred," he shouts, "You stay right there, or I will not buy you any cotton candy later!"

Now he'll have to buy Al cotton candy, which he had never planned on doing, but the threat works, and Al stands stock still on the edge of the sand while Arthur turns to Mattie.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

Mattie nods.

"Is it scary?" Shake. "Is it too loud?" Shake. "Do you still want to go down there?" Nod. "Have you ever been to the ocean before?" Shake.

Arthur smiles and nods in understanding, forming a silent _ah_ with his mouth. "It can be a bit overwhelming your first time, even though it is beautiful. You'll love it though. I promise, it's every bit as wonderful as it seems."

He holds out his hand slightly, as if he hopes maybe Mattie will take it. Mattie looks down quickly, pretending he didn't see the gesture. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Arthur's hand drop back to his side; he doesn't dare look up to see the hurt on his face. He's never held Arthur's hand, not even on his first day of school, not even when Arthur took him to the crowded mall to buy new clothes. The thought of it makes his little hand burn in all the places Francis' hand used to cover it, reminding him that he's not meant to be here, and that Arthur is not meant to be his papa. So he sticks his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie and begins to walk with his head down, down the path to where Al is waiting, shifting impatiently from side to side.

The minute Arthur and Mattie's feet touch the sand, Al is off again, racing to edge of the water and running back, screaming with delight, the first time a wave tickles his toes.

"Do you want to pick a place to put down our things, Matthew?"

Arthur's voice is light and brisk, so Mattie feels it safe to meet his eyes once more when he decides on a spot a little ways down the beach that sits slightly in the shade of the dunes. He points to the space and Arthur nods his approval, so they trudge over the slippery ground into the shade, with Al tagging along behind, pestering Mattie to take off his hoodie and come in the water with him. Mattie looks to Arthur, who nods in encouragement, then turns to begin laying out a towel on the sand. No sooner has Arthur turned away than Al grabs Mattie's hand and starts running; Mattie doesn't even have the chance to remind him that he hasn't taken off his hoodie. Then they arrive at the waterline, and Mattie's a little bit glad he's still wearing it.

Al lets go of his hand the moment his own feet touch the water, and he splashes further out until he's knee deep. Mattie stands just shy of the point where the last wave began to flow backwards. Al is spinning around, chasing waves in and out, shrieking with surprise when an unexpectedly high wave hits and sprays up to his face, but it takes Mattie a moment to convince himself to step to where the incoming wavelets just barely creep over his toes. He inhales sharply at the water's first touch, but it's pleasantly cool and a little bit tickly, and the corners of his mouth begin to creep up into a smile. He steps forward a little more until the water washes all the way over his feet, and finally, his face splits into an almost-grin that morphs quickly into an expression of shock when the waves rush back out and he feels like the sand is disappearing from right underneath him. He almost falls, and he feels his heartbeat speed up and his breaths come quicker for a moment until more waves come and the sensation repeats each time. Slowly he realizes that he is still standing in the same spot, on firm ground, and he decides that that must just be what happens. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, letting the breeze and the waves rush over him. When he opens his eyes, Arthur is standing next to him.

"So what do you think?" Arthur asks, though Mattie can see in his eyes that he already knows the answer.

Mattie has no words. He can only smile and nod, even though it wasn't exactly a yes or no question.

"Do you want me to take your hoodie so you can go out where Alfred is?"

Mattie barely hesitates before nodding once more. He wriggles out of the sweatshirt and hands it to Arthur, then takes a step forward. And another. And another. The water is up to his knees, brushing the bottoms of his swim trunks. A few more steps and he's waist deep. He gasps reflexively as the water first hits his bare torso, but quite suddenly, the gasp turns into a laugh. It seems to touch his very soul, and he feels a tingling warmth shoot out from his chest to the tips of his fingers and toes, and suddenly he can't stop laughing. It's so wonderful, so alive, and he joins Al in his shrieks of joy as they watch the waves crash further out, sending spray to freckle their faces with salt. Mattie accidentally gets a mouthful of water and he splutters, scraping his tongue with his teeth; it's saltier than people say. Al laughs at the look on his face.

"Come on Mattie, let's race the waves!" he shouts, and off he goes.

Mattie doesn't often run, and he almost never shouts or makes any loud noise, but something about the waves and the wind fill him with a life and an energy that he can't contain, so he takes off after Arthur. The boys spend hours running back and forth on the shoreline, trying to keep ahead of the waves, and shrieking with laughter whenever the water catches their heels. Mattie can't remember the last time he felt so happy, and just for now, he doesn't try. He doesn't think, doesn't dwell on the times Francis used to toss him in the air and he would let out those same delighted shrieks. They are there, of course, in the back of his mind, but as long as he keeps his eye fixed on Al just a few steps ahead of him, and keeps thinking that maybe this time he'll catch up, they don't make him sad. Perhaps they will, later, but for now he is rapturously happy and incredibly alive. He can't explain it, but right now the past doesn't matter, and the future doesn't either. All that matters is the wind and the waves and the laughter and the happiness he feels right now.

Two PM seems to arrive in the blink of an eye, when Arthur stands up and calls them in from the water. They traipse back across the beach, limbs heavy and covered in sand, hair drying in odds clumps shaped by the saltwater. Arthur hands them each a towel from the bottom of his tote bag. Al eschews drying off in favor of walking around with the towel over his head, saying "Boo," and running into things, so that Arthur eventually has to grab him and rub him down himself. Mattie is glad to put his hoodie back on-the soft lining immediately warm against his skin-which has cooled quickly in the breeze, despite the sun. They re-pack their towels into the bag and begin the walk back up the path that runs through the dunes, going barefoot to let the sand rub off their feet. They reach the street, Arthur puts the bag with the towels back in the car and tells them to put their shoes back on so they can cross the street to the boardwalk and find somewhere to eat a late lunch.

"Cotton candy?" Al asks hopefully.

Arthur sighs. "Lunch first."

They decide on a little sandwich shop a few blocks down from where they parked. Arthur gets a lobster roll, Mattie and Al each get a grilled ham and cheese sandwich with fresh french fries. Mattie hasn't been so hungry in ages—not since he came to live with Arthur—but it's a good kind of hungry, the kind that makes everything taste like the best thing he's ever eaten, not the kind that makes his stomach feel small and achey. Even Al is too hungry to chatter much, and they pass a fairly quiet half hour eating at a picnic table outside the shop. Once fed, however, Al is brimming with energy again and anxious to explore the bustling boardwalk. He's been looking longingly towards the cotton candy vendor ever since they sat down, and Arthur sighs once more and walks them over. He buys Al the smallest size he can, knowing that in about an hour he will have a sugar-high Alfred on his hands and it will be no one's fault but his own.

"Do you want some, Matthew?" he asks.

Mattie shakes his head. Francis bought him cotton candy once at a fair and it got all over his face made him feel sticky for hours.

"Is there something else you would like?"

Nothing in the immediate vicinity catches his eye, so Mattie only shrugs.

"All right," Arthur says, "Just tell me if you see anything."

Mattie nods and tucks his hands into his hoodie's front pocket as they stroll down the boardwalk. Al is practically skipping, always a little bit ahead of them. He looks like he's trying to see in all directions at once, and at least once every couple seconds, he extends a sugary pink finger and exclaims, "Look!" Mattie stays close to Arthur. He's beginning to be drowsy. It's been a long day so far, and the hours in the ocean plus a warm, filling lunch make him want to curl up and take a nap. He doesn't want to bother Arthur or ruin Al's fun, however, so he tries the best he can to fight his drooping eyelids and keep up with Arthur. He's a little bit behind now, but he can still them. Then his eyes shut for a split second too long and he stumbles, and when he picks himself up again, a crowd of teenagers has passed in front of him and Arthur is nowhere to be seen.

He is wide awake now. Some part of him knows that they can't be too far away, and that if he keeps walking down the boardwalk, he will probably catch up to them, but he's alone, surrounded by strangers, and his brain is shutting down, leaving him paralyzed with a rising sense of panic. He spins around, the rational part of his brain no longer able to point out that Arthur is most certainly not behind him. Strangers pass by like he's invisible. He knows that he ought to call out, or perhaps start to cry—then maybe someone will notice him and tell him what to do—but his anxiety stubbornly rebels against causing any sort of scene. So he clenches his fists and tries to take deep breaths. Maybe if he just stays here, they will come back and find him.

Or maybe they won't.

His aloneness is suffocating him. He tries to tell himself that Arthur would never forget him, but this crowded isolation is all too familiar.

There were days when Francis would forget to come out and make dinner or buy food or do laundry. There were days when Francis would forget that Mattie had to go to school. But none of these compared to the one terrifying day when Francis forgot that Mattie needed to be picked up from school. He stood by himself in the mass of milling elementary-schoolers, watching contentedly for Francis' car. It never came. Mattie was sitting hugging himself on the steps of the school, long after all the other children had gone, when a teacher finally found him, asked him where he lived and took him home. The teacher went inside to talk to Francis. They talked for a long time, and when they came out again, the teacher looked very somber and Francis looked like he had been crying. It wasn't long after that when Francis called the foster home.

Mattie tries in vain to tell himself that Arthur isn't like that, but he can't stop imagining the boardwalk empty and dark, and himself sitting alone on the steps of the sandwich shop. And there are no teachers here. Nobody to take him home. Maybe he'll have to stay here forever. Maybe he'll have to steal sandwiches and cotton candy. Maybe someone will find him and send him back to the foster home.

Maybe Arthur left him on purpose.

Maybe he didn't want Mattie anymore. Just like Francis hadn't wanted him. It's all perfectly, terribly clear to him now. He knew this would happen. Why hadn't he run sooner?

_Might as well run now._

He has no idea where he's going or what he's going to do next, but he was always going to end up here anyway. Alone, with nothing much to his name except the clothes on his back. He wishes he had Kumajirou with him, but it's too late for that now. He spins around so his back is to the ocean, looking for a road that leads inland. He doesn't know much, but he knows that Francis lives far away from the water, and he supposes that's as good a place as any to start. Once he gets away from the ocean he can figure out his next step.

He takes a deep breath. Here he goes…

"MATTIE?!"

A shrill, panicked voice cuts through the crowds on the boardwalk and the fog of desperation in Mattie's mind. He whips around.

"Alfred?"

His exclamation isn't loud enough to be heard over the clamor, but it doesn't matter, because moments later, two familiar figures appear out of the sea of people. Al bursts through first. There are tears stains on his cheeks and panic in his eyes. Arthur is right on his heels, striding quickly, not quite running, swinging his head left and right, scanning the crowds for a small boy in a red hoodie.

"MATTIE!"

Al's cry of relief is practically a scream. He sprints to Mattie and almost tackles him to the ground.

"I thought you had run away without me," he sobs quietly into Mattie's ear.

"Matthew."

Arthur's voice is faint, but no less relieved. His face is wan, and the concern and dark circles under his eyes that had vanished this morning are back in full force, but to Mattie he appears like a savior. Mattie shakes off the distraught Alfred and runs straight at Arthur. For the first time in almost-four months, he throws his arms around Arthur and buries his face in his shirt, muffling the gasping sobs of relief that he simply can't hold back. He doesn't see the tears that spring to his guardian's eyes, but he feels his warm, strong arms around him, and for the first time in forever, he feels completely safe. Then Alfred wraps his arms around him from behind, and Mattie feels warm tears begin to seep through the back of his hoodie, but he doesn't mind. They came back for him, and that's all that matters.

Arthur blinks away his tears before the boys can see them, then squats down, holding Mattie gently in front of him as though afraid he might break to pieces in his hands.

"Are you all right, Matthew?"

Mattie sniffles and nods.

"What happened?"

Mattie looks down and scuffs his feet on the ground. He feels a bit silly now, and he doesn't want to explain that he fell behind because he almost fell asleep while walking. He chews his lip, waiting for Arthur to ask another question, to start guessing what happened. But when he looks back up, Arthur is looking levelly into his eyes, waiting, but not impatiently. Matthew fixes his gaze on the ground again.

"I was getting really tired and then I tripped and some people walked in front of me," he murmurs, just loud enough so Arthur won't have to ask him to repeat himself.

Arthur doesn't ask him any more questions. He doesn't ask why Mattie didn't just run after them, or why he didn't call for help. He just gathers him against his chest and holds him tightly for a minute.

"I'm so sorry," he whispers, "I should have been paying attention."

Mattie doesn't respond, but he wipes his eyes and smiles at Arthur as best he can.

"Can we go home now?" he asks timidly. _Home._

Arthur smiles back. "Of course we can."

He stands up, putting a hand on either boy's head. Al shakes it off and begins walking, leading them back the way they came, but Mattie lets it linger a moment until Arthur sighs and begins following Al down the boardwalk. Mattie stands stock still for a minute before rushing forward and slipping his hand into Arthur's. Neither man nor boy looks at the other, but one smiles to the sky and another to the ground as they make their way homeward.

. . .

The drive back is a quiet one. Mattie sleeps the whole way, undisturbed by Al's low chatter which Arthur indulges but doesn't respond to. He only stirs when they arrive and Arthur shakes him awake. Arthur sends them to take their baths once they get inside, and when they come downstairs again, there's soup simmering on the stove and a cake in the oven.

Dinner proceeds as quietly as the day's previous meals. They do the dishes—Al washes, Mattie dries—while Arthur drizzles a chocolate glaze over the freshly baked cake. Al belts an off-key "happy birthday"; Arthur snaps a few pictures of Mattie sitting shyly with his seven-candled cake.

"Make a wish," Al prompts, once the song is finished, but Mattie doesn't. He knows what he would have wished for a few days ago—a few hours ago, even—but right now there's nothing he can think of. Maybe he'll have that same old wish again tomorrow, maybe not. Right now he really just wants cake.

After cake, they gather in the sitting room. Al is still talking animatedly—nobody knows what about anymore—Arthur is in his armchair sipping tea, and Mattie is sprawled on the floor with crayons, drawing pictures of the ocean. He's just putting the finishing touches on the sky (some clouds and a seagull), when Al sits bolt upright and exclaims, "I almost forgot!"

Mattie looks curiously up at him and Arthur asks him what he forgot.

"Mattie's present!" Al replies, and tears off.

Mattie can hear him thumping loudly up the stairs—one particularly loud thump occurs when he tries to take two steps at a time and trips—then rustling around in their room, and finally barreling back down the stairs even fast than he went up. Al returns to the sitting room carrying a large piece of poster board, which he hands to Mattie. He sits in breathless anticipation while Mattie examines his gift.

It's covered in star stickers—Al's signature decoration. In large multicolored letters it reads: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MATTHEW"—he'd checked the spelling with Arthur this time. And underneath the words, in vivid watercolors, is a fairly intricate picture. There's a house in the background, along with the sun and the moon. Clouds and grass complete the nature scape, and in the front stand three stick figures—one big, two little. The big one—labelled "Arthur"—is wearing a clumsily-drawn tie and has eyebrows bigger than the green-dot eyes underneath them. The small one that's supposed to be Al has an odd, flat brown hat on his head, while the Mattie-figure has what appear to be two giant black O's resting in his hair; Mattie assumes those are meant to be his goggles. In the bottom right corner, in tiny, messy print, it says, "Love, Al."

Mattie smiles. "Thank you, Al," he whispers, eyes shining.

Al grins in reply. "I told you it was an awesome present!"

Mattie doesn't respond, but he takes the poster and scampers to the kitchen, where he fixes it to the refrigerator with a star-shaped magnet, to match the stars in the picture. He turns to see Al and Arthur both standing in the doorway. Arthur has an odd look on his face, like he can't decide whether to laugh or cry, and Al crosses his arms proudly over his chest, pleased that his picture is also in their homemade art gallery. Mattie doesn't say anything, but walks between them back to the sitting room.

"So was this the best birthday ever?"

Al asks as if he already knows the answer, so Mattie doesn't say anything. He lets Al thinks what he will, but the fact is that it might just be the best birthday he can remember. Even the getting lost part, because they found him again.

"You know what would have made it even better?" Nobody answers, but Al keeps going anyway. "There was a carnival at the boardwalk with lots of rides and games. That would have been the best!"

Arthur laughs. "Well, maybe next year," he says lightly.

"Next year," Al echoes, "We'll go for your birthday next year, Mattie, right?"

Next year. Next year is far away and frightening. But Al wants him to stay. And maybe Arthur wants him after all. Mattie sticks to his habit of remaining silent, but as he begins to yawn and rub his eyes, he gets up from his spot on the floor, walks over to where Arthur is sitting, and crawls up onto his lap. A look of total shock crosses Arthur's face for just a moment, before it relaxes into a contented smile. He adjusts his position so that Mattie can be more comfortable, and he rests his hand softly on Mattie's head. When the boy doesn't pull away, he begins to run his fingers tenderly through his hair. A whisper of a sigh escapes Mattie's lips as he falls asleep.

A year is a long time. But for tonight, this is enough. For all of them.


	3. Chapter 3

The day after his birthday, Mattie is standing in the kitchen again, staring at the calendar, experiencing an uncanny sense of deja vu. Three years ago—three years!—he stood here marveling at how fast three months had gone by. Now he’s ten, and he barely has to tilt his head back to read the numbers on the wall. He can see all the way over the countertop and just reach the top shelf of the refrigerator if he stands on tiptoe. That same refrigerator which once proudly displayed whimsical first grade drawings now holds photos of two gap-toothed grins and Al’s elementary school graduation. There’s a “Reminders” list stuck up there too; “sign Mattie up for library bookclub,” and “buy Alfred new cleats,” top the list, followed by “need more tea,” and “stop by drugstore.” Al is currently at soccer practice, after which Arthur mentioned they might swing by the sporting goods store to look at cleats and then stop at the drugstore to pick up Arthur’s sleeping medicine. Mattie has been sprawled on his bed, enjoying the peace and quiet of the empty house and reading _The Hobbit_ —a birthday present and the newest addition to his ever-growing personal library. It may be the biggest book he’s ever attempted to read, but he’s enjoying it enormously, and Arthur promised him that he would be reading it for the rest of his life. He’s a chapter-and-a-half in and eager to get back to it; he only came downstairs to grab a mid afternoon snack. After rummaging through the fridge, retrieving some milk and snitching a generous slice of leftover birthday cake, he began heading back upstairs, but stopped to check that the date of the first bookclub meeting was on the calendar, and now here he stands, thinking back to that day three years ago when he asked himself why he hadn’t run yet.

He hasn’t seriously considered running in over a year—almost two years, maybe. Yes, he recalls, it was a few weeks after his eighth birthday, when Arthur and Al had gotten into a big fight. Mattie had locked himself in his room, covered his ears, shut his eyes, and curled into the tightest ball he could, waiting for the storm to subside and all the while remembering the promise he’d made to himself a year ago: one year. Al had been sent to bed without any dinner. Arthur had been silent throughout the meal and taken his pills and gone to bed right after. Mattie had lain awake for hours that night, every second on the edge of getting up, taking his things and going. But somehow he’d managed to fall asleep, and in the morning, things were better. Al and Arthur still fought, of course, but Mattie learned quickly that their fights were intense but short-lived, and when everything settled down, they were a family again. That’s why today, the first time Arthur suggested letting him stay home by himself, he agreed without any anxiety, because he doesn’t want to run anymore, and he’s not worried that he ever will.

He glances at the clock on the wall. It’s three o’clock now. Al’s practice should be over in about half an hour, and if he and Arthur run their errands, then they should be gone until four-thirty or five. Mattie thinks of all the reading he can get done in that time and smiles, then hurries upstairs as quickly as he can without spilling his milk. His snack is long gone and he’s about to finish chapter four when Al trudges into their room smelling of sunscreen, sweat, and dirty socks. He drops his bag unceremoniously in front of his dresser, then flops onto his bed and groans. Mattie rolls onto his side and wrinkles his nose.

“Al, that’s disgusting,” he remarks, “You have to sleep there tonight. Why don’t you take a shower first?”

Al drags himself into a sitting position and sticks out his tongue. “Coach made us run suicides. I hate soccer.”

“No you don’t. You just hate running,” Mattie replies easily, rolling back onto his stomach so Al won’t see the little smirk on his face.

“Whatever,” Al snarks, then continues whining. “Coach makes me play defense. I wanna score goals.”

Mattie pretends to be indifferent and interested in his book. He’s heard all this before.

“I wish Arthur would let me play baseball.”

_You’d be great at baseball. You’d hit a billion home runs. You’d be the hero. Yeah, yeah. I know._ Mattie rolls his eyes.

“I’d be so great at baseball, Mattie. I’d score a billion home runs. I’d—“

“Matthew! Alfred!” Arthur’s voice mercifully cuts short Al’s lament.

Al flops back onto the bed, sighing dramatically. Mattie rolls his eyes again and lifts himself up and off his bed.

“Yeah,” he calls back down the stairs, sticking his head out into the hallway.

“Tell Al to take a shower. Dinner’s at six.”

“Al—“ Mattie begins.

“Yeah, yeah, I heard,” Al grumbles, half sitting up but then simply sliding off the bed like a limp noodle. He pulls off his sweat and grass stained jersey and chucks it at Mattie.

“Ew, what is your problem?” Mattie looks askance at him, tossing the jersey back. It lands on Al’s head and he smirks. “It’s not my fault you’re so lazy.”

He skirts quickly from the room before Al can retaliate, taking his empty plate and glass downstairs to the kitchen.

“Hi,” he says over his shoulder to Arthur’s back as he puts his dishes in the sink, “What’s for dinner?”

“Will you wash these?”

Arthur turns from the counter, holding out three or four carrots and overlooking Mattie’s question. The boy takes the carrots but continues to look expectantly at him.

“What? Oh, sorry. Um, chicken,” Arthur replies, turning back to the biscuit dough he’s slicing and arranging on a baking sheet.

Mattie hums his approval and begins scrubbing the carrots under cold water, so as not to take hot water from Al’s shower that he can hear running upstairs. When he’s finished with the carrots, however, he turns the faucet as hot as it will go for a few moments until he hears a shriek of shock and indignation from upstairs, then shuts off the water. He gives the carrots back to Arthur and begins to set the table. Several minutes later, Al stomps into the kitchen, wet hair hanging in his eyes and a disgruntled expression on his face.

“Mattie!”

Arthur turns sharply from his preparations at the tone of Al’s voice.

“Yes,” Mattie responds innocently.

Al glowers at him, but doesn’t dare start anything under Arthur’s warning eye. He just stalks to the refrigerator and takes out a Coke.

“Alfred—“ Arthur begins to chide him, but Al cuts him off.

“I ran like a billion miles today, Arthur,” he declares defiantly, his belligerent expression daring Arthur to try and stop him.

Arthur sighs and runs both hands up his face and through his hair. “Fine,” he snaps, “Do whatever you want.”

Mattie bites his lip and finishes setting the table in silence. He knows the quarrel isn’t exactly his fault, but he hasn’t made it any better. Al slurps his soda as loudly as he can to remind Arthur who won that particular battle, and Arthur chops carrots with unnecessary force. Mattie tries to slip away, but Arthur tells him not to go anywhere because dinner will only be a few minutes, so he sits uneasily in his chair, trying to make himself as small as possible, until the oven timer rings and the chicken and the biscuits come out. A few minutes later, there are seasoned chicken breasts, biscuits and glazed carrots on the table and they’re all sitting and eating in silence. The tension in the air makes Mattie’s skin prickle, and he wonders fleetingly if perhaps he ought to say something, but it’s easier to keep his head down and eat as quickly as he can. Arthur keeps taking deep breaths like he’s about to start talking, and Al is chewing his food so aggressively that Mattie can hear his teeth clacking together. The overall effect is borderline unbearable, and the minute his plate is clean, Mattie takes it to the kitchen and disappears up the stairs before Arthur can stop him. He shuts and locks the bedroom door, then slumps against it and slides to the floor. With his eyes closed and the cool smooth surface of the door at his back, he finally feels like he can breathe again.

He can just hear the clink of dishes downstairs if he really concentrates, but not the low murmur of Arthur’s voice or Al’s exuberant babble. The silence has followed him upstairs and he can’t bear it any longer. He shoots up and throws himself face first onto his bed, smashing his pillow over his ears. Al and Arthur don’t even fight that often, but when they do, it’s at seven in the morning—after weeks of getting along—over whether Al poured himself too much cereal. Mattie can never tell when or why such a quarrel will erupt, so he keeps his head down, his mouth shut, and his opinions on their general silliness to himself. Al really doesn’t need half a box of cereal, but Arthur really doesn't need to yell about it. Al is dumb sometimes. Mattie loves Al, but he also knows that about him. Sometimes he thinks Arthur forgets that.

The sounds of dishes and silverware die away, and the clanking whir of the dishwasher begins to resonate through the house. Mattie expects to hear the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs, of either Al or Arthur finally escaping the company of the other, but both remain downstairs, and Mattie can’t hear them arguing either. He lies very still and pushes the pillow off of his head, listening intently for the slightest sound of discord. Nothing. He lets go a long breath, lifts himself up and slides off the bed. He hasn’t seen much of Al or Arthur all day, and if they’re getting along, he’d rather be with them than hiding in his room. He tiptoes down the stairs, ready to turn around at the slightest sound of a raised voice, but all he can hear are even murmurs in the sitting room. Just before he turns the corner into the room, however, he stops and listens.

“I think Mattie wants us to stop fighting.”

Al’s voice is tinged with concern, but Mattie can’t help rolling his eyes. _Really, Al?_

Arthur sighs. “I want us to stop fighting, Alfred.”

“Yeah.” Al’s reply is slightly muffled, and Mattie can imagine him looking down at his hands as he speaks. “That too.”

Arthur sighs again and doesn’t reply. Even without seeing them, Mattie can feel the tension building in the room. Maybe he should step in, maybe that would make things easier. But he doesn’t want to get in the middle of this, so maybe he should just go back up to his room. He’s about to do exactly that when an unexpected sound grabs his attention and roots him to the spot. Unless his ears are deceiving him, he’s pretty sure he just heard Al sniffle. Only seconds later, his suspicions are confirmed as a childish wail echoes throughout the hallway, followed by the soft _whump_ of what he assumes is Al throwing himself into Arthur’s arms.

“I’M SORRY, ARTHUR!”

Mattie stands blinking as the sudden storm of muffled sobs continues unabated for several minutes. Sometimes he really doesn’t understand how Al’s mood can change so quickly, but he’s glad that Al and Arthur have stopped fighting, so he turns to tiptoe back upstairs. The floorboards, however, creak slightly under his foot.

“Matthew?”

Arthur appears at the doorway. He has two large tear stains on the front of his rumpled dress shirt, and a slight red rim around his own eyes, but he goes down on one knee and holds out his hand to Mattie.

“How long have you been standing there?”

Mattie looks down, embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping, but Arthur doesn’t sound angry, so he only hesitates for a moment.

“Not very long,” he replies, which isn’t exactly true, but it all depends on how you look at it.

Arthur must mistake his hesitation for concern, however, because he takes Mattie’s hand in his own and holds it gently, like it’s fragile. He always seems to think that about Mattie, and Mattie can’t understand why. Al is the one who goes from defiance to tears in a matter of minutes, and yet Arthur argues with him almost like he’s another adult. He's constantly scolding Al about being responsible and behaving and dressing properly—the fight over the oversized t-shirts was a long and painful one. Shortly after Al’s tenth birthday, Arthur put his foot down. Al refused to leave his room for three days because Arthur said he wasn’t allowed downstairs without “real clothes.” Arthur relented after only one day, but Al stuck it out two more for sheer stubbornness. Arthur stood outside the bedroom door for what seemed like hours, begging Alfred to come out and eat something. Mattie stood outside the door and told Al to stop being stupid and come out—Arthur had said he could wear his t-shirts if he liked. But Al absolutely refused to come out until he finally finished his stockpile of snacks. Mattie was only really surprised that the snacks lasted that long. Dinner that night was a silent, awkward affair, and nothing more was said about Al’s choice of clothing, but the next morning he came downstairs in a regular-sized shirt and a pair of cargo shorts that Mattie supposed he had worn before but had never before been visible. Arthur’s jaw dropped slightly, but he remained silent and offered Al his usual breakfast cereal, not saying a word when Al poured himself three times the normal serving size.

“Everything is fine, Matthew.”

Arthur calls him out of his memories with gentle words and an even gaze. Mattie forgets for a minute what they’re talking about and stares blankly back at him before nodding and allowing Arthur to pull him into a brief hug. Over his guardian’s shoulder, he sees Al’s tearstained face, and he remembers. He pretends not to see—Al will get embarrassed—but he wonders if everything really is fine. He can’t ask that though, so he mumbles something about getting ready for bed, and Arthur sighs and lets him go. He can hear low, soothing conversation from the sitting room as he climbs back up the stairs. He hopes Arthur is right. He hopes everything is fine.

He’s reading in bed when Al finally stumbles, bleary-eyed, into the bedroom. Al scrubs hastily at his face when Mattie looks up, rubbing his eyes to rid them of any remaining tears. It’s easy to tell that he’s been crying, but Mattie doesn’t mention it.

“Tired?” he asks casually, only half looking up from his book.

“Yeah,” Al replies with forced easiness, “I ran so much today.”

“So much,” Mattie mimics, nodding sympathetically.

Al doesn’t notice the teasing. “Yeah, like, I bet I lost a ton of weight. I’m gonna have to eat so many hamburgers!”

Mattie wrinkles his nose and makes gagging noises at the thought of eating multiple hamburgers. Al, however, seems to be in heaven over the prospect. His birthday is in two days, and hamburgers are always his dinner of choice. Every year, Arthur sighs and asks, “Again?” Then Al retorts that they only have them like once a year and they’re his very favorite, please, Arthur, it’s his birthday. So Arthur gives in and they have hamburgers another year running. Al eats at least two. Mattie tolerates one with decent equanimity. Arthur eats the side salad that he insists on making because it’s healthy. Mattie enjoys the salad more than the hamburger. Al tolerates it, but only once he drenches it in ranch dressing, which Arthur says defeats the purpose, but it’s Al’s birthday so he lets it slide.

“Hey, if you don’t like them,” Al mumbles through the pajama shirt he’s trying to pull over his head, “More for me.”

“Yup.” Mattie yawns. “More for you.”

“So whatcha getting me for my birthday?” Al has both his feet stuck in one pant leg now and is hopping around trying to get them out as he talks.

Mattie rolls his eyes. “You’ll find out in two days.”

Al gets his pajama pants on correctly and flings himself onto his bed. “That’s so far away,” he moans.

“If you go to sleep, it’ll come quicker,” Mattie snips, closing his book and pulling the blankets over his head.

“Mattie.”

He ignores him.

“Mattie, the lights are still on.”

“So turn them off.”

“But I’m already in bed.”

Mattie shoves the covers off his face and looks at him with exasperated disbelief. “So am I. And I was in bed first.”

“I ran a million miles today—“ Al begins, but Mattie cuts him off with an icy glare, so he reluctantly hops out of bed and flips the light switch.

“Happy now?”

Mattie rolls his eyes at the darkness. “Goodnight Al.”

. . .

The next morning dawns hot and muggy, and the day only gets hotter, as July days are wont to do. Mattie turns up the air conditioning and spends the morning lying on his bed, reading. Across the hall he can hear Arthur in his office, talking on the phone in rapid, clipped tones that Matthew can’t quite make out through the walls. Eventually Arthur’s voice fades into the background, and Mattie floats away into his own little world where magic is real and the only doubt in his mind is whether Bilbo will ever make it home to his cozy hobbit hole. Al is off doing who knows what, but as long as he’s not disturbing the wonderful peace that reigns in the house right now, Mattie doesn’t really care. The air in the bedroom tingles with a lovely, dry chill that belies the oppressive heat outside and makes the bedcovers a warm, welcome refuge from the world. Mattie’s eyes begin to drift across the page without really seeing. He blinks slowly, heavily, trying to remember the last thing he read. He can’t. The page seems to be getting closer to his face. Blurrier. He can’t lose his place but it’s so warm; he just needs to lay his head down…

The vicious clatter of a phone being slammed down jerks Mattie from his impromptu nap. He rubs hastily at the small spot of drool on page 93 before stumbling out of bed—in ten minutes he somehow managed to become inextricably tangled in his blankets—and sticking his head out the door to peer blearily towards Arthur’s office.

His guardian is leaning against the wall outside the office door, eyes closed, rubbing his temples. He hears the creak of Mattie’s bedroom door and looks up to meet Mattie’s sleepy, worried gaze. He offers a thin smile, but doesn’t say anything as he heads downstairs, briefly ruffling Mattie’s hair as he walks past. Mattie hugs the doorframe and looks intently after him. His heart is still beating a little too quickly from the sudden start, and after a minute he pads apprehensively after Arthur with some vague idea of making sure he’s all right.

He meets Al at the bottom of the stairs. The other boy looks quizzically at him, then glances in the direction of the kitchen, where they can hear the sound of the kettle being set on the stove. Mattie shrugs and shakes his head. They tiptoe across the hallway to stand in the kitchen doorway, like silent twin shadows, watching Arthur brace himself against the counter, over the sink. He runs both hands through his hair, then stands up straight and reaches for the cabinet on his right, from which he removes a glass and a small white bottle. He fills the glass with water from the tap, shakes two pills from the bottle, pops them in his mouth, puts the glass to his lips and throws his head back. Even from the other side of the room, Mattie can hear him swallow; everything is silent save for the rising of hiss of water beginning to boil. Arthur massages his temples the way he always does when he begins to get a headache, and the whole room seems to hang suspended in a moment of tense discomfort. Mattie's head hurts too--it always seems to start when Arthur's does--and he squeezes his eyes shut against the empathetic pains that he doesn't quite understand. Were it just the two of them--Mattie and Arthur--no doubt they would remain so frozen for long moments yet, but Al is not accustomed to solemn stillness of any kind, and he shifts restlessly. The floorboards creak and Arthur turns around.

"Matthew. Alfred. What is it?"

Mattie hesitates to reply, shrinking away from expressing any concern that might upset Arthur further. Al, apparently—unsurprisingly—has no such qualms.

"What's wrong Arthur?"

His voice is sure and demanding in the way that always makes Mattie nervous. He stands straight and looks Arthur squarely in the eye while Mattie shrinks further into himself, preparing to flee should things escalate. Perhaps this is why Arthur treats Al so much like an adult; Al acts like one. He challenges Arthur with all the confidence of an equal, not with the deference of a child. It is in moments like this that Mattie can imagine what Al must have been like when he lived on the streets. Five year-old though he was, Mattie can only see him standing as tall and defiant as he does at age eleven. The thought is intimidating, almost beyond him, and his eyes dart from Al to Arthur, watching, waiting.

Arthur sighs; his hands seem permanently attached to his head, doomed to roam forever from temple to forehead, through his hair and back again.

"Nothing." He gives Al the same tight smile he gave Mattie upstairs. "Things at work just...not quite going the way I...expected."

His voice is as tight as his expression, and Mattie notes the heavy pauses in his speech. He's not saying exactly what he means, and Al notices too.

"Did you lose more money today?"

Mattie is torn between gaping in disbelief and shutting his eyes and ears in defense against whatever might come next. He's not quite sure what it is that Arthur does for a living. All he knows is that he spends most of the day on the phone, talking to people about money. Al seems to have a better understanding of whatever it is--perhaps because he's lived here longer, perhaps because he's older--but Arthur always absolutely refuses to discuss it with either of them. Money is a touchy subject. Arthur never speaks directly about it if he can help it. He gives both boys a small allowance and teaches them about saving and spending wisely, but once when Al asked him how he got his allowance, Arthur only shook his head.

"It's not polite for adults to talk about money," he said firmly, and that was that.

So Mattie doesn't know how Al knows anything about Arthur's money--if or how he makes or loses it. He doesn't know if Al doesn't remember that conversation with Arthur, or if he's just ignoring it, but it seems to him the boldest thing Al has said since the day he point-blank refused to set the table when Arthur asked. Talking about Arthur's job is like disobeying Arthur's orders—not to be done.

But for some reason, Arthur doesn't seems angry. On the contrary, his face seems to soften a little bit. The kettle on the stove begins to whistle.

"You know that's not something you need to worry about, Alfred," he says gently.

His tone is reassuring, but he turns to attend to the kettle, and it's clear that that line of inquiry is closed. To Mattie anyway.

"But would you tell us even if it was?"

Mattie has to take back his earlier thought. This is definitely the boldest thing Al had ever said. And yet, somehow, it strikes Mattie as a very good question. One that he might ask himself, but never speak aloud. Arthur is their guardian. It's his job to protect them. Would he ever tell them if something was wrong?

Arthur sets the tea kettle back on the stovetop with deliberate calmness. Mattie makes himself as small as he possibly can, bracing himself, and when Arthur crosses the kitchen floor to stand directly before them, even Al draws back a bit. Arthur doesn't sigh, he doesn't pause to run a hand through his hair. He squats so he's on eye level with the two boys. Mattie flinches involuntarily, but when Arthur speaks, there is neither anger not harshness in his voice.

"Boys," he says, and his voice is tender—sad, almost, "I know that you worry. I know that you think that maybe you will always need to worry." Here he takes a deep breath and ruffles his hair, as if gathering his thoughts in his hands, which he hold out for them to take. "But I am here to take care of you. And as long as I am here, you will never need to worry. About money, about food, about anything."

Silence reigns for several long seconds. Mattie's heart doesn't seem to have heard Arthur's words; it beats loud and fast, churning his insides. Arthur's warm hand begins to feel clammy against his own, which grows cold and sweaty. He wonders briefly how Al is reacting, but his vision has narrowed to a tunnel pointed directly at Arthur's face, and he cannot move his head. Arthur takes a long, deep breath, and Mattie feels something hanging heavy in the air above them. It is about to fall from Arthur's lips, and he doesn't know why, but he is frightened.

"I was going to wait until after your birthday, Al, to tell you this, but now seems like the right time."

Something inside Mattie is knotted so tightly he doesn't know that it will ever come undone. The tightness is screaming, screaming at Arthur to stop, at Mattie to run. Arthur's face is too serious, his words too soft. It reminds him too much of another face, at another time, speaking words full of gentle remorse, telling Mattie that he's sorry, that he'll do better from now on, that Mattie doesn't have to worry, that he'll always be his Papa. There are promises in these words that cannot be kept, and a love in these words that cannot last.

"I want--" Arthur begins, and Mattie knows what he's going to say before the words can even form on his lips, "I want to adopt you. Both of you."

All the thoughts and fears in Mattie's mind suddenly condense into one swirling center of physical pain deep in his chest. Arthur's face is frozen in hopeful expectancy, but Mattie's whole body is frozen in terror. He wonders again—fleetingly—what Al is thinking, but his rational thought is fast disappearing. His tunnel of vision grows narrower and narrower until he realizes he can't even see Arthur's face anymore. There's just this blur in front of him, and somehow it's getting sucked in too, in to this whirl of confusion, and he's falling, falling, falling...

"Mattie!"

Something interrupts the rapid, hypnotic swirl of everything. There's one clear sound and a vibration that seems to shake things back into distinction.

“Mattie!"

The world is back in place, if only for a moment. Arthur has been replaced by Al, who is standing before him, holding him by both his arms and shaking him. Mattie can hear Arthur's voice faintly, urgently in the background, telling Al to stop, but Mattie has escaped the terrifying fall, and that's what matters to him. He clings to Al as to a life raft in a storm. He can't look at Arthur. He wants to run, but Al is holding him in place, so he focuses on breathing and trying to think over the noise inside his head. He can't. He can only hold onto Al. Tighter and tighter until his whole body hurts.

"Mattie," Al repeats in a pained murmur, "Mattie you're hurting me."

Mattie tries to relax, but he's afraid of falling, and not just mentally. His body feels heavy and light at the same time, and he doesn't trust himself to stand on his own. His fingers grip and arms lock almost of their own accord. Al doesn't protest anymore.

"C'mon Mattie, let's go upstairs, ok?"

He follows Al obediently towards the stairs, clinging to his hand for dear life. He almost doesn't, but he makes the mistake of looking back. Arthur is standing in the doorway, head bowed. Mattie's not sure, but he thinks he sees a tear fall to the ground. He quickly turns away and lets Al guide him to their bedroom.

He sits, shaking, on his bed. Al kneels in front of him, holding his hands and trying to soothe him with gentle hushes, but Mattie can see the fear and uncertainty in his eyes. Al stands suddenly, as if struck with inspiration, and fetches Kumajirou from the chair in the corner. Mattie obediently takes the bear and hugs him tightly to his chest out of habit, but he cannot stop shaking in time with the word that still rings in his ears. Adoption. Arthur wants to adopt him.

Arthur.

Arthur who took him in over four years ago and has never taken anything but the greatest care of him. Arthur who always remembers to make dinner and take him to school. Arthur who came back for him when he got lost. Arthur who buys him books and got him his first library card. Arthur who is the only reason he ever met Al.

Al.

Al who talks too loudly and moves too clumsily. Al who stands up to Arthur and scares Mattie out of his wits sometimes. Al who can eat three hamburgers in one sitting and still have room for cake and ice cream. Al who is the only reason Mattie stayed all those years ago. Al who is the closest thing—the only thing, really—he’s ever had to a brother. If Arthur adopts them both, they really will be brothers forever.

Forever _._

Mattie tries to imagine forever, but it just makes his head hurt, and without thinking about it he finds himself massaging his temples the way Arthur always does. Forever is something that doesn’t exist, no matter the promises that people make. Blue eyes and golden hair and lilting accents end. So will green eyes and bushy eyebrows and rumpled suits. Oversized t-shirts become too childish. Little heads grow out of once-enormous aviator’s caps. _The Velveteen Rabbit_ gets left under the bed and _The Wizard of Oz_ wears to pieces from being read too many times. Patience runs out. So does love.

And if it did exist, if forever was real, if a family could stay together… _Forever?_ Forever means dinner every night and new books every birthday and pictures on the fridge of middle school dances and high school graduations and first days of college. It means chamomile tea every sick day and homemade scones at every school event. It means someone to stand behind Mattie's desk when it’s “Dads Day” at school. It means never going back to the foster home again.

But forever also means nowhere to run when the fighting starts again. And it always starts again. It always will. Forever. It means teary eyes and angry voices and hours curled up in the bedroom hoping it ends soon. Forever. It means long sighs and awkward silences, headaches and heartaches. It means wondering if they’ll make it through today without an argument. Forever. Forever, in short, means a long time to wonder if maybe this wasn’t the right choice. Forever is a long time to spend regretting.

“Mattie?”

Al’s eyes are wide and wary, and his voice shakes with uncertainty. Mattie blinks slowly, as if waking up.

“I’m fine.”

The words comes out of his mouth, but he doesn’t think they come from him. He’s not fine. He’s so far from fine. Just yesterday he was thinking he would never want to run again. Now the suitcase under his bed seems to be burning him through the mattress.

“No you’re not.”

Al’s eyebrows knit together in a manner strongly reminiscent of Arthur’s. His jaw is set and his eyes gleam perceptively—or maybe just with unshed tears. Mattie glowers at the floor and clenches his fists, wadding the bedcovers beneath him in both hands. Al is never dumb when Mattie needs him to be. He blabbers loudly when Mattie is reading, talks over him when Arthur asks how his day was, leaves candy wrappers on the bedroom floor, and apparently thinks that Mattie’s drawings can be used as placemats. But when all Mattie wants is to get away with a little white lie—just so he can have some time to think—Al remembers that he has a working brain and fairly acute powers of observation.

“No, really,” Mattie’s voice is like acid, and it burns in his throat and on his tongue, “I’m fine.”

Al blinks rapidly and bites his lips into a thin white line. Mattie can see his jaw working.

“Fine,” he forces out, “Fine. Just—Just don’t go—Just stay—I’ll be back.”

Al turns on his heel and strides out the door, not quite making it out of Mattie’s line of sight before scrubbing fiercely at his eyes. Then he’s gone down the stairs and Mattie is alone with his thoughts, suddenly wondering why on earth he thought it was a good idea to send Al away. It’s Al’s strangled plea—don’t go anywhere—against every fiber of his being that’s telling him to get out, to get out now. It doesn’t even make sense, the rational part of him screams back. After four years, why would he run now?

_He lived there for four years?!_

A voice from his days in the foster home echoes through his memories like a ghost. Mattie was six years old, legs hanging stiffly off a chair too big for him, sitting next to his new social worker, a week after Francis sent him away.

_Closer to five,_ the lady behind the desk said gravely, _Francis Bonnefoy took him in before his second birthday._

Then the social worker, a skinny woman in a tight black skirt, said a lot of angry things that made Mattie shrink further and further into his chair, wanting to defend Francis but too afraid to speak up. He hadn’t spoken a word since coming to the foster home. He didn’t understand then that Francis had done anything wrong. He just knew that after four years, he wasn’t wanted anymore. And if they knew, they would be angry at him, not Francis.

Now of course, he understands more: that good foster parents don’t forget to feed you, don’t lock themselves in their rooms and leave you alone. What he doesn’t understand is why that won’t happen with Arthur. He doesn’t know why Francis stopped taking care of him. What if Arthur does the same thing? What if four years is just…long enough?

Right on cue, two raised voices break into strained conversation downstairs. Mattie closes his eyes and swallows past the enormous lump in his throat.

_Too long._

He doesn’t want to go. Not for good. Not yet. But he needs to get out. So he picks up _The Hobbit_ from where it sits in his nest of blankets, snatches one of Al’s snacks from the stash under his bed, and tiptoes out the door. He treads gingerly the now long-familiar zig-zagging path down the stairs that—through trial and error—he has determined to be the least creaky. He focuses on placing his feet in the exact right spots, trying to block out whatever angry words might waft in his direction, but it’s hard to ignore Al and Arthur’s conversation when they’re talking about him.

“No, Arthur, you need to leave him alone!”

“It’ll be fine Alfred. Just stay here and I’ll talk to him.”

Mattie freezes, but Arthur doesn’t appear in the hallway. There’s a small, defiant shape blocking the door to the sitting room, arms outstretched to stop anyone from passing, like the day Mattie first met him. So Arthur isn’t coming to stop him, but he’ll still have to pass the sitting room to get to the door, so he decides to stay put for the moment.

“You scared him!”

“I scared him?”

Alfred blows out a frustrated sigh. “Do you know what happened the last time somebody promised to adopt him??”

Dead silence reigns over Mattie’s racing heartbeat and Al’s angry huffs of breath. Mattie can’t see Arthur’s face, but he can imagine the look of dumb shock that he always gets when Al shouts. At long last, Arthur speaks.

“Do you?”

It’s a stupid question, in Mattie’s opinion. He talks to Al a great deal more than he talks to Arthur. It seems reasonable to suppose that Al knows a lot about him. Al’s response mirrors Mattie’s own.

“He told me, Arthur. Francis promised to adopt him, then forgot about him, and when he remembered him, he sent him back to the foster home!”

Mattie can’t help it; he lets out an anguished wail. Suddenly he’s moving. He doesn’t care about the creaking as he scrambles down the rest of the stairs, through the hallway, toward the door. He pays no heed to the shouts behind him as he pushes past both Al and Arthur, steps outside and shuts the door behind him. Then he’s running. Down the front steps, down the sidewalk. He doesn’t know where he’s going but if he’s moving fast enough, nothing matters except the air in his lungs and his feet hammering on cement.

Feet on cement. He’s not even wearing shoes. The realization stops him short, and if he weren’t quite so upset, he might even laugh. He’s standing in the middle of the sidewalk, barefoot, holding _The Hobbit_ in one hand and a bag of fruit gummies in the other. But Al’s words are still ringing in his ears, and he’s suddenly aware that he’s started crying—he doesn’t know when. The tear tracks are already leaving cool streaks on his face; they wake him up a little bit and he takes a look at his surroundings. He’s at the corner of Washington and Maple, where he waits for the school bus every morning, across the street from the neighborhood playground. He’s not sure where to go from here; he never walks farther than this. He hears footsteps pounding behind him.

“Matthew!”

Arthur is only feet away, with Al panting behind him. Mattie doesn’t think they understand that the point of running away is to get—well—away. The street is quiet at one o’clock on a summer afternoon, and almost without thinking, he bolts across the street toward the playground. There’s a playhouse under the big slide where Arthur can’t get in.

“MATTHEW!”

Mattie doesn’t pay any attention to Arthur’s panicked shout. The street is empty anyway; it’s not like he’s not being safe. Arthur worries too much. Although, he thinks when hot bits of stray gravel dig into the soles of his feet, he really wishes he had worn shoes. He makes it safely across the street and ducks into the playhouse, where he curls up in the corner and wonders why it all turned out like this. Two hours ago he was reading happily in bed, and his only problem was whether he would be able to finish the next chapter before lunch time. Ten minutes ago he was going to slip out quietly to get some breathing room. Now he’s hiding in a damp, musty old playhouse, sweating in the July afternoon heat, not ever wanting to go home. Arthur is outside the little wooden house, begging him to come out and just talk to him, please. Mattie stops his ears and screws his eyes shut, drawing his knees as close to his chest as he possibly can. The door creaks open. He doesn’t move.

“Mattie?”

Al’s voice is gentle, barely more than a whisper between the measured gasps of air he’s taking. He must have run here as fast as he could. Mattie ignores him.

“Mattie I know you can hear me.”

“No I can’t.”

“Ha-ha. Funny.”

Mattie doesn’t respond. But he takes his hands away from his ears and relaxes his face. Al sits down next to him and he sighs. He didn’t have much hope that Al would leave him alone, but now there’s none. Remarkably, however, the silence extends into several minutes. Al’s breathing has finally evened out. Mattie opens his eyes. Al is siting next to him, staring at the opposite wall and twiddling his thumbs. Mattie didn’t know Al could sit still that long. Arthur stands anxiously outside the house, but he too is still and silent. The maddening emotional whirlwind in Mattie’s mind begins to settle, and he asks himself briefly what he’s doing here. But Al notices that his eyes are open and reality finds him again.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“What?” Mattie hasn’t consciously decided to be difficult, but it’s what comes out of his mouth, so he goes with it.

“Why getting adopted scares you so much.”

Mattie winces. There it is. Al’s surprising—possibly accidental—amount of tact was bound to run out sometime.

“It doesn’t,” he blurts out, which they both know is a lie, but he doesn’t know what else to say. Denial is easy.

“You know you don’t have to say yes.”

Mattie blinks. “What?”

“You don’t have to say yes,” Al repeats, tilting his head to one side as though explaining something he thought was obvious, “You know, to Arthur."

Mattie blinks again. “But then…Don’t you go back to the foster home?”

Al shrugs. “I didn’t.”

Mattie’s eyes widen all the way and seem to stick like that.

“You—did you?—did Arthur ask you? When?”

“A little bit before you came.” Al's reply is casual, but he shifts uncomfortably. “I’d lived with him for about a year, and he asked if I wanted to be adopted.”

“And you said no?”

“I was six!”

Mattie frowns. “How is that a reason to say no?”

“I don’t know,” Al’s voice acquires a strained, nervous pitch, and he draws his knees to his chest, mimicking Mattie’s earlier posture, “Living in a house with an adult was weird.”

It makes sense. After living on the streets for the first five years of his life, living with Arthur must have been a huge change for him. An almost impossible change. Mattie looks at Al like he’s never really seen him before. How did he manage it at all?

“But he didn’t send me back,” Al continues, softly, “And then you came. And you know what, Mattie?” He looks up, and his eyes are feverishly bright. “If you wanted to say yes now, I’d say yes now too.”

Mattie blinks; he seems to be doing a lot of that. Al would say yes. For him. Al, who fights tooth and nail every day like he’s back on the streets and in charge of his own life. Al, who stood up and said no to family and safety at the age of six. Al, who Mattie somehow always expects will really be the one to run away one day. It’s a lot to take in. Maybe too much.

“I don’t know.” Mattie’s voice is the smallest it’s ever been, and that’s quite an accomplishment. “I just—I don’t know. I mean Francis—and what if—what if Arthur—I don’t know.”

Al nods. “I get it. And if you want to say no, I’ll say no too.”

Mattie frowns again at this. Something is wrong.

“But Al,” he begins hesitantly, “What do you want?”

Al bites his lip and looks down. He spends a long time studying his relatively clean hands before looking up at Mattie once more. His eyes are even brighter than before, and this time there’s no mistaking the brightness for anything but tears, yet when he finally speaks, he seems to be holding back laughter.

“I want to be with you, Mattie,” he says simply, “I don’t care if we’re adopted or not. We’re basically brothers anyway, and brothers should stick together. I’d still run away with you, if you still wanted to do that.”

Silence again. Mattie is sorting through about a thousand different thoughts and doesn’t know which ones to think first. He has about ten different questions he’d like to ask, just off the top of his head, but the one that finally slips out of his mouth isn’t the one he means to ask. He means to ask, “Really?” or, “Why?” or even, “Remember that time we almost ran away together four years ago?”

But instead what comes out is, “Arthur let you stay even after you said no?”

It’s Al’s turn to blink. Apparently, it wasn’t the question he was expecting either.

“Yeah,” he responds, “I told you that already.”

Something inside Mattie hardens into a firm resolve.

“Okay,” he says,standing, “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Al asks, but Mattie doesn’t reply. He only takes Al’s hand firmly in his own and marches straight out of the playhouse.

Arthur is leaning wearily against a large maple tree at the edge of the playground, watching the little house, waiting for the boys to reappear. When Mattie comes out with Al in tow, he stands up straight. Mattie can see his chest rising and falling rapidly, and he looks extremely pale—slightly green, even. He doesn’t speak, only watches as Mattie and Al come closer. When they've almost reached the tree, Mattie drops Al’s hand and breaks into a run. Before Arthur can react, little arms are hugging him fiercely around the waist, and a torrent of hot tears is soaking his shirt front. For a moment, everything freezes like that, but then Mattie feels warm strong arms descend around him, and his violent sobs turn to a steady flow of tears that have been pent up inside him for God knows how long. Dog walkers and joggers and mothers with babies in strollers are staring at them as they pass by, but that doesn’t matter.

After several minutes, Mattie pulls away, scrubbing at his eyes and sniffing loudly. Arthur clears his throat and wipes his own eyes, then gets down on eye level with Mattie.

“Matthew,” he says. His voice is serious but very gentle, and he holds out his hand.

Mattie takes it, after rubbing his own hand on his shirt to dry away the tears. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry I took you by surprise today. I shouldn’t have just said it like that. I should have given you more time.” He takes a deep breath. “And I want you to know that it’s okay if you’re not ready. I know it’s a big change, and I won’t be mad. I know…” He sighs, seeming to change whatever he was going to say mid-sentence. “I know this can’t be easy.”

Mattie can’t speak, so he nods and looks at the ground. Al is standing behind him. He wonders what Al is thinking, what he really wants, what he might have been hoping would happen. But there’s no way of knowing that, so he looks back up at Arthur, one question weighing heavily on the tip of his tongue.

“I can still stay, right?”

Arthur looks bemused.

“I mean,” he almost chokes on the words, “You won’t send me back to the foster home?”

Arthur’s eyes and mouth open into perfect O’s. He grips Mattie’s hand tightly and pulls him close, wrapping him in another hug.

“Of course not!” he exclaims, voice breaking slightly, “I will never send you away!”

Mattie closes his eyes against the tears he feels threatening once more. “Never" is still a bold promise, and not one he really thinks Arthur can make. But he feels, more than understands, that even if it’s not exactly true, Arthur means it. So he takes a deep breath and blinks back the tears, steps out of Arthur’s embrace and manages a wan smile. He turns to see Al behind him, holding _The Hobbit_ and eating the gummy snacks. He shakes his head and takes the book with a watery chuckle that turns into full-fledged laughter when he catches a glimpse of Arthur’s feet.

He isn’t wearing any shoes either.

. . .

Sleep comes quickly that night for all of them. Mattie wakes up in the morning to Al crowing triumphantly over the pile of presents he finds downstairs. Arthur is already making his traditional birthday pancakes, and although he’s quieter than usual—he neither laughs nor scolds at Al’s new toy sword-wielding antics—he lays a hand affectionately on each boy’s head as they eat, and they stay like that for a while. Mattie finds, as he often does, that a good night’s sleep helps a lot of things. Arthur hasn’t mentioned adoption at all, but the mere thought of it doesn’t make Mattie panic anymore, so he supposes that’s a good sign. And when Al opens his present from Mattie—a brightly colored book called _10,000 Cool Facts About Airplanes_ —there’s a card on top signed in meticulous elementary-school cursive that reads, “Dear Al, Happy Birthday! Love, your brother, Matthew.”


	4. Chapter 4

Mattie wakes up on the first day of school, confused when he sees Al's bed already empty. He panics for a minute, flailing out of bed, trying to get a glimpse of the clock. It reads quarter after seven, however—the time he normally gets up for school. Why on earth is Al up already? He normally needs to be all but dragged out of bed to make it to the bus stop on time. The bedroom door creaks open.

"Matthew, are you up?"

Arthur sticks his head into the room, sees Mattie sitting on the floor in a tangle of blankets, blinking owlishly, and raises a bemused eyebrow.

"So is that a yes or a no?"

Mattie blinks twice more and shakes his head. "Where's Al?"

Arthur frowns. "He left about half an hour ago."

That's right, Mattie remembers, feeling slightly foolish. Al was starting high school today—right now, actually, he thinks as he glances once more at the clock—and the high school begins classes forty-five minutes earlier than the middle school, which doesn't start until eight. So Arthur must have already dragged Al out of bed at six-thirty or so. Mattie winces. That must have been fun. How did he ever sleep through it?

"Oh yeah," he mumbles.

"And you should be leaving in another half hour," Arthur continues, as though reading off a script or a grocery list, "So get up, get dressed. There's breakfast downstairs. I have to take a phone call at seven-thirty, so you'll have to walk yourself to the bus stop."

Mattie sighs and bites his lower lip, but Arthur is gone before he can say anything, so he takes out his frustration by kicking off the sheet wrapped around his legs in the least efficient way possible. He knows he should be grateful that Arthur made breakfast, but it's the first day of school. Even though he doesn't need Arthur to walk him to the bus stop anymore, it would be nice for today. Especially since he won't have Al. He can't believe he forgot Al had to get up earlier. He should have been up to say good-bye and good luck. High school is a big deal. Mattie isn't entirely sure why, but it is, so he wanted to be there to see Al off. Standing up, he kicks moodily at the desk that has stood at the foot of his bed for a couple years now, since he can't actually kick himself. Really though, from the outside, it's hard to tell whether he kicks it on purpose or merely because there's not enough room to move around without kicking something. The bedroom which once comfortably housed two little boys has grown fractionally smaller over the years, what with Mattie's bookshelf and Al's sports equipment, two desks for the heavier homework loads of middle and high school, and the natural growth spurts of teenage boys. Arthur has talked about moving his office things and letting Al take the office as his new bedroom, but with nowhere to move but into his own bedroom, he hasn't actually effected the change. He probably won't, especially since he spends more time than ever in his office these days. He needs his own space, Mattie figures, and it's not as though sharing the bedroom with Al is a big deal.

Still, he finds himself thinking as he begins to get dressed, it would be nice to be able to open his dresser drawers all the way without backing into Al's bed. A few years ago, when they bought the desks, Arthur decided it would be most economical to put the beds on risers so they could keep the dressers underneath. It was like a life-size game of Tetris on a board that kept shrinking. Neither boy complained, but some days they felt keenly the lack of space. When Mattie learned in his sixth grade science class that goldfish kept in small tanks didn't grow as big as they would in a larger tank, he wondered if maybe that was why he was shorter than other boys in his class: because his bedroom was so small. Of course, he thought later, Al was sprouting up like a beanpole, so maybe that theory didn't check out.

He pulls on his bookclub t-shirt and the first pair of jeans he finds; gone are the days when he worried overly much over what to wear on the first day of school. Really, he never worried very much about it at all, but it always seemed important to Arthur, so he would let Arthur fuss over him on the first day of school, picking out everything down to what socks Mattie and Al would wear. Then on the first day of seventh grade, Al pitched a fit, saying it wasn't cool for Arthur to dress him and demanding to know why couldn't he just wear random shorts and a t-shirt. Arthur backed down quickly, but a hurt expression flashed across his face before he disappeared back into his office. Mattie still would have let Arthur pick out his clothes if he wanted, but he didn't mention it any more, so Mattie attended the first day of sixth grade in an outfit of his own choosing. Nobody deplored his fashion sense—of course, nobody had done so before either. And so life went on.

His backpack is full of fresh notebooks and unused pencils that seem to rustle around more crisply than their worn predecessors as Mattie slings the bag over one shoulder and heads for the stairs. Arthur's office door is closed, muffling the sound of one side of a tense conversation. Mattie sometimes thinks he remembers a time when Arthur didn't sound so worried every time he was on the phone, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. The stairs creak underfoot as he makes his way downstairs, no matter how quietly he tries to step—another inevitable side effect of growing up. Along with eating breakfast alone, apparently. There are eggs in a covered pan on the stove, and day-old scones in a basket on the table. A pot of tea sits, still steaming, next to the scones. Mattie reminds himself once more to be grateful—Arthur made a hot breakfast—but he's not very hungry. He serves himself some eggs, which he pushes around on his plate for a few minutes before taking a few bites out of scone. But the scone is dry and crumbly and sticks in his throat and in odd corners of his mouth, so he gets up from the table and pushes all the food carefully into the trash, covering it strategically with his napkin to hide how much he threw away.

Food disposed of, he stands at the bottom of the stairs, wondering if he should go up to say goodbye to Arthur. He's not sure how long he stands there, but however long it is, it's too long. The croaking honk of the school bus' horn sounds faintly from the end of the street and Mattie has to go.

"Bus is here," he shouts up the stairs before grabbing his backpack and striding out the door, breaking into a run the minute his feet hit the sidewalk.

The bus driver is shaking her head at him as he climbs the steps onto the bus, panting but managing to flash her a grateful smile.

"Mattie boy, one of these days I'm gonna leave your ass behind," she scolds, but with the air of someone making an old joke.

Mattie only gives a little chuckle in response. The first time she said it to him, he blanched visibly. Now it's as familiar as the smell of Al's cleats in the bedroom—not exactly the most pleasant thing, but somehow reassuring in its constancy. Of course, now that he and Al aren't riding the same bus anymore, he might actually be on time most days. He takes a seat at the front of the bus, hugging his backpack against his chest and staring vacantly at the greyness that is a muggy September morning. The bus whines to life—no other children get on at this stop—and chugs away down the road. Excited babble floats to him from the back of the bus, but it moves inexorably forward with each stop, until Mattie is surrounded by noise that he can barely tune out by closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing. It's a trick he taught himself in sixth grade when Al went through his drumming obsession. He didn't actually have a drum, but he would bang out haphazard rhythms on any flat surface within his reach, and then Arthur would yell across the house to stop, for the love of God, Alfred, or so help me, I will— _blah, blah, blah_. Mattie has honestly stopped paying much attention to their fights. They're full of angry words and empty threats, and they leave behind a sullen cloud that hangs around—sometimes for days—but they've kind of...faded. Just another feature in the backdrop of his life. And the fights have actually gotten less frequent as the boys' lives grow busier and Arthur spends more and more time in his office. When Arthur doesn't come down for breakfast anymore, it's hard for him to scold Al about the massive bowls of cereal he still pours for himself.

Beneath his seat, Mattie can feel the tension in the brakes as the bus whines to a stop. He cracks his right eye open, peering out the window to see the familiar brick building that has been his house of learning for two years already. He doesn't have particularly strong feelings about it either way, but right now he's glad this is his last year here. The space where Al used to sit next to him on the bus seems to radiate a cold, empty energy, and Mattie glares out of the corner of his eye at the nearly identical brick building next door. It has stolen Al from him and he doesn't like it. He closes his eyes and waits for the chattering crowds to get off the bus so he can follow them at a distance, unhurried and alone with his thoughts.

"Have a good first day, Mattie-boy," the bus driver calls after him as he finally climbs down, and he turns with a smile to give her a wave.

The bus pulls away from the curb, giving way to the one right behind it. Another swarm of students descend through the doors that hiss open, and Mattie finds himself carried along with the babbling current of Sunday best and stiff new backpacks and shoes that still shine, unmarred by the all-powerful dinginess of middle school. He looks down; his own shoes are anything but shiny. Al got new shoes because he was starting high school. Next year, Mattie tells himself, next year he can replace the faded, once-white and red tennis shoes that pinch his toes just a little too much to be comfortable. He doesn't mind that much; he's walked with his toes curled up for almost as long as he can remember. He used to curl them like he curled his fists when he was uncomfortable, but somewhere along the line it just became a habit. Arthur still gives him the occasional odd look for it—it makes his feet look disproportionately small—but his toes feel cold and strange when he stretches them out all the way. So he keeps them curled. And it works out, because now he can pretend his shoes still fit him.

Looking at his shoes in the middle of the hallway is, however, a dangerous occupation, and his gaze jerks upward as he catches his elbow on the backpack of a tiny sixth grader who disappears back into the crowds before Mattie can open his mouth to apologize. Around him mill hundreds of babbling preteens, some tall and gangly, some chubby, some short, all awkward, all talking, all unintelligible. And although Mattie walks among them, he somehow isn't one of them. He's never needed them. He's always had Al.

He finds his locker as quickly as he can, leaning against it and closing his eyes so he can finally catch his breath and gain his bearings through the chaos. He tries thinking back three years ago, when Al started middle school and he had to face fifth grade on his own. He doesn't remember it being this hard. He remembers other kids—not friends, exactly, but friendly faces who didn't care that Mattie mostly kept to himself and had a reading level well above their own, who didn't think he was "weird," who didn't know yet that it wasn't cool to hang out with the foster kid who didn't have a real family. Instead, he remembers Al coming home, downcast and confused, asking why his friends from last year wouldn't talk to him anymore. But then he went to soccer tryouts the next day and one look at his skills convinced the other boys that he was cool enough to let into their circle. Al's social problems after that were minimal—he even got a date with the most popular girl in the sixth grade to the annual Valentine's Day dance—and so the year after that Mattie coasted comfortably into the middle school social scene by virtue of the fact that he was Alfred' little brother, so he must be all right. None of that, however, would be any help now. Al's friends are gone, just like Al, and there is nobody to defend him against the judgmental hive-mind of pre-adolescent caste systems. Still, as he has never been particularly outcast before, the odds that he will simply be left to himself are reasonably high, and without Al, that's all he really wants, anyway. So with that encouraging thought, he pushes off from his locker, opens his eyes and takes a deep breath. Here he goes.

. . .

When Mattie gets home that afternoon, the silence rings in his ears the minute he opens the door. When he goes to drop his backpack at the kitchen table, the breakfast dishes are still sitting out. A heavy ache settles in the pit of his stomach, and he chews absently at his lip as he pours out the cold tea and places the leftover scones in a plastic bag. Has Arthur left his office at all since this morning? Has he eaten anything? Mattie puts the kettle on the stove; the least he can do is make some fresh, hot tea. Then he takes out two scones from the bag, wraps them in a damp paper towel and sticks them in the microwave. A few minutes later, he's got an entire tray assembled, complete with tea, scones, jam, and two aspirin tucked under a napkin. His hand hovered over the cabinet door for a long minute before he opened it and took out the little white bottle of pills. Mattie can't recall a day in recent memory that went by without Arthur opening that bottle. Long hours spent on the phone and on the computer take their toll, and all Mattie wants is to make it a little easier. So he double checks to make sure the aspirin are both still there, then climbs the stairs to Arthur's office, slowly, so as not to spill a drop of the hot tea.

He taps on the door. There's no response, but he doesn't hear anything else, either, so he cracks the door open and peers inside. Arthur's head is in his arms. The computer screens are black, so he must have been like this for quite a while. His breathing is slow and even, and he doesn't move at the low creak of hinges as Mattie slips all the way into the room. Mattie hovers over his guardian, unsure whether or not to wake him. The conviction that Arthur ought to eat something wins out, however, and he speaks in the gentlest whisper he can manage.

"Arthur?"

Arthur starts up with a gasp.

"Matthew? What are you doing? What time is it?"

Mattie checks his watch. "A little after three. I'm back from school."

Arthur sits up all the way and runs his hands through his hair.

"I must have dozed off," he mutters, half to himself, then smiles wryly, "It's quieter without you boys here."

"Without Al, maybe," Mattie retorts with a small laugh, setting the tray down on Arthur's desk. "Where is Al, anyway?"

"He told me he was going to stay after for soccer tryouts. What's all this?" Arthur gestures to the scones and tea.

Mattie shrugs. "Nothing, I just thought you might be hungry. You didn't come down for breakfast this morning."

He hopes Arthur will say something, reassure him that he ate breakfast, ate lunch, had a snack, anything. But Arthur says nothing, only picks up the tea, takes a sip, and sets it down again, as if even lifting the cup for that long took too much effort. Then he reaches for the napkin, more out of habit, Mattie supposes, than because he actually needs it, but the corner of the white paper hits one of the pills underneath, sending it skittering across the tray, and Arthur freezes. His eyes dart up to meet Mattie's own, solemn expression, and he puts the napkin down once more on top of the pills. He aligns the corners and smooths out the creases, like making that napkin look perfect is the most important thing in the world, then his hands return to the teacup and he puts it to his lips once more, taking a longer drink this time.

"Thank you, Matthew," he says as he returns the cup to its saucer, "The tea is excellent."

Of course it is. Mattie's been making tea for years now. Almost since the moment he walked through Arthur's door. Seven years. After seven years he's bound to be good at making tea. That's really not the point. What was Arthur thinking when he saw the aspirin? Did he not take it because he doesn't need it? Because he's embarrassed? Mattie didn't have time to study his expression in the brief look he gave him, but he thought he saw a pain in Arthur's eyes that he carefully smoothed away—like the creases in the napkin—when he looked up again. He just can't quite bring himself to believe that Arthur doesn't need the pills. Maybe he's waiting for Mattie to leave, and then he'll take them. Mattie can't imagine why. It's not like it's some big secret. It's not like headaches are something you can control. It's not like taking aspirin for those headaches is anything to be ashamed of. Mattie chews his lip, thinking, but he can't figure it out. So he does the only thing he can. He changes the subject.

"When do you think Al will be home?"

Arthur looks up, mid-sip, over the rim of the teacup. "Not sure. It'll probably be a while," he says, lowering his elbows to the table, holding the cup in front of him. Like this has only ever been a normal conversation.

Mattie nods. "I've got some homework to do. I'll try and get it done before Al gets back." He manages to crack a small smile. "Since he's the noisy one."

Arthur hums vaguely in response, already sorting through papers on his desk. Suddenly, he gives a great start.

"Shit!"

Mattie tenses involuntarily. Arthur looks up at him with an apology in his eyes.

"I have a call at four o'clock that I haven't read the briefing for. I'm sorry. Go get your homework done. I'll be down for dinner at five."

He doesn't say "hopefully," but Mattie can hear it dangling in the space where the words end. He nods.

"Okay."

He slips out of the office, closing the door almost all the way behind him. Then he stands in the doorway a few seconds longer, peering through the crack he left between door and frame. He watches Arthur slump forward, run his hands through his hair and massage his temples, then, with a practiced pinching motion, take the two aspirin off the tray and pop them in his mouth before lifting his teacup once more and draining it, as though trying to forget that anything but that lukewarm beverage had passed his lips. Mattie's own lips form the thinnest of lines, and he swallows with some difficulty past the lump in his throat, which he tells himself is just from holding his breath so Arthur won't hear him still outside the door. He looks on for a few more seconds as Arthur sighs deeply, starts up his computer, and begins skimming through a stack of papers, then shakes himself and heads downstairs to where his backpack sits at the kitchen table, full of books and pencils and pre-algebra.

He's working on the pre-algebra when Al gets home. He'd rather be reading _Tom Sawyer_ , but he's decided to save the best for last.

"Al, what's thirteen times thirteen?"

"169." Al drops his gym bag on the floor, goes to the sink and fills up a glass of water. "Don't you have a calculator?"

"Not allowed," Mattie replies without looking up.

Al shrugs, choosing not to comment on the blatant legalism at work in his brother's reasoning. "Where's Arthur?"

Mattie chews his eraser, writes down a few numbers on the paper in front of him and frowns. "In his office. He had a call at four."

Is it just his imagination, or does Al give a sigh of relief? He looks up sharply. "Why?"

"Just wondering." Al's voice echoes with affected carelessness. "I'm gonna go take a shower."

Mattie frowns. Something is off, but he can't figure out what it is. He's about to return to his homework when Al turns around and Mattie glimpses a long streak of orangey-red running down the back of his brother's shirt. Something tightens inside him. He knows what that is, and he knows where Al got it. It could be nothing. But then again, it might be something.

"Did you get that at soccer tryouts?"

Al stops. "What?"

"Oh nothing, it's just I didn't know they decided to make the fields red this year." Mattie has to force the lightness into his voice. "Like, I'm pretty sure grass is normally green."

"What the hell are you talking about, Matt?" The words come out clipped, chopping off the last syllable of Mattie's name and making it sound sharp and angry.

Mattie swallows hard. "I mean, unless you weren't at soccer tryouts?"

Al's eyes narrow. "I really don't see how it's any of your business."

"Dude," Mattie snaps, "You can tell me where you were. Geez, it's not like I'm gonna tell on you. And I mean not going to soccer tryouts isn't exactly something you can hide from Arthur. Pretty sure he's gonna figure it out when you're _not at soccer games_."

Al seems to deflate. He drops his gym bag again and slumps into the chair next to Mattie.

"You're right," he says in a low voice, "I didn't go to soccer tryouts."

Mattie rolls his eyes. "Obviously."

"I went to play with some of the baseball guys." Now that he's started, the words tumble out practically on top of each other. "I mean obviously their season hasn't started yet, but there were fliers up for a walk-on captain's practice. So i thought, hey, might as well. Mattie," he lowers his voice to a barely contained whisper, "they said I'm _really good_ for a first-timer. They want me to keep coming to unofficial practices and then try out for real in the spring."

For a moment, Mattie stops to wonder what it must be like to be Al. To be good at every sport he tries his hand at. To walk onto a soccer field and impress boys two or three years older than him. To walk onto the baseball field—with barely any experience beyond whiffle ball in the park occasionally—and impress the senior captains of the team. To make friends easily just because he can run fast and hit a ball, with his feet or with a big stick. It's a world Mattie doesn't understand. Doesn't really want to be part of, either. But sometimes he wonders.

He resurfaces from his thoughts to see Al staring expectantly at him, beaming an overwhelming combination of joy and anxiety. This is all Al has ever wanted. His dream, coming true. All of a sudden, Mattie doesn't know what to say. So, of course, he says the exact wrong thing.

"Isn't baseball a lot more expensive than soccer?"

And Al's face falls immediately.

"Yeah," he murmurs, "There's a lot more equipment, so the fee is bigger. But," his face brightens again, "maybe since it's not till the spring, we'll be able to save up the money, right?"

Mattie is screaming internally at himself, wishing he could take it back. Arthur is going to give Al enough of a hard time without Mattie reminding him of it. Admittedly, he's not sure exactly what Arthur will say, but he's not looking forward to it. And—he would hazard a guess—Al isn't either. Because whatever Arthur says, Mattie is pretty sure it won't be that by spring they can save up the money Al's going to need to play baseball. But he's said enough, so he keeps this doubt to himself and tries to look encouraging and sympathetic. He doesn't really think it'll work, but Al seems to relax a fraction.

"Okay, for real now, I've gotta go shower."

"Okay."

Al disappears into the hallway, and Mattie tries to return to pre-algebra, but he can't concentrate on numbers anymore, so he gives in and pulls out _Tom Sawyer_. He'll finish his math problems later. For now, he pours himself some of the tea he made for Arthur, takes the cup and his book into the sitting room and curls up on the couch. He takes a sip of tea, opens to page one, takes a deep breath, and begins to read.

If sports are Alfred's gift, then Mattie's is the ability to completely disappear from reality the minute he opens a book. He's blocked out countless things: fire alarms, Al and and Arthur's fights, annoying teachers, loud music and Al's incessant drumming in the sixth grade. Very few things can get past the wall that goes up around him; layers upon layers of words protect him from the world outside. It's gotten to the point where the wall never really comes down all the way, even when there isn't a book in sight. The stories saturate the air around him, ready to form tight ranks the minute the world threatens; the words flow through his veins, only a sharp word or loud sound or frightening thought away from being the only thing in his mind. And so from the moment Mattie's gaze falls upon the first word, baseball, soccer, Al, Arthur, and everything else disappear, if only for a few precious moments. It's longer than that, of course, but it doesn't feel that way when Mattie looks up again to see Arthur in the doorway, obviously waiting for a response. He blinks.

"Sorry, what?"

Arthur jerks his head towards the kitchen. "It's time for dinner."

Mattie blinks once more, clearing away the remaining traces of nineteenth century Missouri from his eyes and tucking them away in the back of his mind. He places a bookmark carefully between the pages of his book, then drinks what remains of his tea. The last drops are cold as they hit his tongue and he makes a face. Then he follows Arthur into the kitchen, where there are hot bowls of soup and fresh-baked biscuits steaming fragrantly on the table, just as vivid to him now as Tom and Sid and Aunt Polly were to him only minutes ago. Al is already at the table, fiddling with his napkin and twirling his spoon through his fingers, waiting. He catches Mattie's eye and grimaces, and at first Mattie thinks it's just because he's impatient for dinner, but then their earlier conversation returns along with the rest of reality, and Mattie wonders if maybe Al could stand to wait a little longer for everybody to sit and begin eating. With Arthur so busy, and now with school starting again, the evening meal will really be the only time for catching up and sharing their days. Whatever is going to come out is about to come out now.

Mattie's instincts are, unfortunately, correct. Almost as soon as they sit down, the first words out of Arthur's mouth are, "So how did soccer tryouts go today, Alfred?"

Time seems to slow down. Either that or Al really does take that long to open his mouth in reply. Either way, for a long moment there's nothing to focus on but the food in front of him, and as Mattie puts the first spoonful to his lips, there's something undeniably metallic about the taste of the soup. It came from a can. And underneath the steaming surface, the broth at the center of the bowl is still cold. It's microwaved soup from a can. Mattie snatches up a biscuit as inconspicuously as he can and takes a bite. It's soft and buttery and melts in his mouth, and there's no way it's anything but one of those biscuits you get pre-made in a cardboard tube. There's no way Arthur made it—it tastes so good. And yet it's just as hard to swallow as the dry, lumpy scone Mattie tried to stomach this morning. He can't manage another bite, and he so he resumes half-heartedly stirring his soup, hoping to even out the temperature. He doesn't know why it bother him so much; it's not like they've never had an easy, thrown-together dinner before. But tonight it's just one more thing wrong on a day that he vaguely remembers used to be exciting. Arthur used to pick them up after the first day of school—they wouldn't take the bus home—and then he'd take them out for ice cream, or cook a special dinner. Now they're eating canned soup and biscuits from a tube, and Al is opening his mouth to speak and Mattie almost can't bear to watch what happens next…

"Good," Al says, "I made the team."

Mattie's spoon hits the table with a tinny clatter. Arthur looks over in surprise and Mattie thinks maybe he asks if something's wrong, but all he can focus on is Al, sitting on the other side of Arthur and mouthing "be cool" across the table at him—the "or else" implied by the fierce intensity of his expression. So Mattie finds himself dazedly shaking his head while Arthur mops up the spilled soup with a napkin. Once the table is clean, Arthur crumples up the soiled paper and leans away from Mattie, eagerly facing his other charge.

"That's great, Alfred! Did you make first or second string?"

"Umm…" Is it Mattie's imagination, or does Al flash him a desperate look? "Second string for now."

Arthur puts a spoonful of soup in his mouth and nods thoughtfully. He swallows. "For now?"

"Well, you know—" Al always babbles when he's uncomfortable, and now his words are falling all over each other. "The coach said that if I keep improving, I could probably make first string, you know, like if I work really hard and stuff, I could probably be a starter. Which would be cool, I guess, but for now I'm second string so yeah…"

He trails off, and Arthur blinks at him, bemused.

"Okay," he says, "Fair enough. When's your first game?"

It's unmistakable; there's definitely a light of panic in Al's eyes now. Mattie doesn't know how Arthur's missing it. He himself is caught wildly somewhere between wanting to throw up and wanting to break into hysterical laughter, somewhere between wanting to rescue Al and wanting the whole lie to fall apart right now. It doesn't. Al regains enough sense to come up with what Mattie would say was actually a clever reply—if he were in the habit of judging such things.

"I don't know," Al says, "I wasn't paying attention when they told us that." He doesn't even need to fake embarrassment; there's certainly no way he's faking the splotchy blush rising on his face.

Arthur sighs and shakes his head, but he's smiling a bit. "Well make sure to tell me when you find out. I want to be there."

Al nods cheerfully. His shoulders fall back into their relaxed slump, and he gives Mattie a lopsided grin and a look that speaks volumes of awkward relief before digging at last into his lukewarm dinner. Mattie looks down at his own, barely touched food, somehow less hungry than he was before, and he doesn't even know how that's possible. He makes a few more half-hearted stabs at the soup while giving noncommittal answers to Arthur's questions about his first day and finishes his biscuit, just so it looks like he ate something, then excuses himself on the pretext of finishing his math homework. Arthur frowns but doesn't press the issue, so Mattie puts his dishes in the sink, then disappears upstairs with his backpack.

He's only just sat down and opened his books when Al comes into the room, shutting the door behind him and slumping against it.

"Dude," he says reproachfully, pushing himself off the door, climbing onto his bed and flopping face-first into the pillow, "Did you have to leave me alone down there?"

Mattie gapes for a second. "Um, dude." His voice is a high, strangled parody of his brother's. "Did you have to _lie to Arthur_?"

Al sighs and flips onto his back, studying the ceiling with affected indifference. "I just didn't want to tell him about the baseball yet."

"Oh my gosh—" the tremble in Mattie's voice gives way to a slightly crazed laugh—"Al, you could've said you didn't make the team. You could have said you didn't go. You could have said _literally anything_. Why on earth did you tell him you _made the team_? What were you thinking that you thought this could _possibly_ be a good idea?"

Al remains silent.

"He's gonna want to come to your games. He's gonna ask you how practice was _every day_. And then he's gonna show up at a game one day and you're not gonna be there and _then_ what do you think is gonna happen? Oh my gosh, Al," he repeats, "What was your _plan_?"

Mattie's heart is pounding in his ribcage and echoing his ears. He doesn't think he's ever shouted at Al like this. Ever. Apparently, Al doesn't think so either, because he's staring at Mattie with something like shock—maybe even nervousness. But when he opens his mouth to speak, it's not an apology that comes out.

"Dude," he says slowly, "Are you okay?"

"Dude?" Mattie shrills, "Dude! No, I'm not okay! You just _lied_ to Arthur and it's like you don't even care!"

"Matt, chill," Al sounds slightly frightened now, but not by his own actions, "I'll tell him the truth eventually."

"Eventually? Eventually. Oh, that's just great."

"Dude—"

"Oh. My gosh. Stop calling me 'dude!'""

"Okay! Okay. Matt—"

"And that's another thing! What's with calling me 'Matt' all of a sudden? Because if this is some cool, new high school thing—"

"Mattie."

Suddenly Al is in front of him, hands on both his shoulders, holding him steady, looking him in the eye. Mattie's own voice is still echoing in his ears and he suddenly realizes how he sounded. He blinks a couple times and shakes his head.

"I'm sorry, Al. I don't know what—I just—" he casts around for some excuse for his behavior. Al's hands are warm and strong; suddenly the cold, empty space that's been beside him since he got up this morning is filled, and he relaxes into his brother's embrace. "I just hate that we're not at school together this year."

Al laughs quietly and lets Mattie lean against him a little bit longer before he steps back again.

"I hate it too," he says, and scrunches up his face, "High school sucks. They make you learn a foreign language."

Mattie swipes at his nose and clears his throat. "Really? What are you learning?"

"I don't need to start this year, so I haven't decided yet. But I was thinking maybe French?"

"No!" Mattie blurts out before he can help himself. "I mean. I've heard Spanish is easier."

But Al is looking oddly at him and there are half-remembered words from his childhood echoing in his head, and Mattie knows exactly why he doesn't want Al to learn French.

_No, No. Like this: 'Je suis Mathieu.' Try again. Good. Now try this one: 'Je t'aime.' Good!_

_But Papa, what does it mean?_

_It means 'I love you.' Je t'aime, Mathieu. Je t'aime._

_Je t'aime, Papa._

He can't bear the thought of Al poring over his textbooks at night, muttering little phrases that Mattie learned when he was young, walking around repeating ' _Je suis Alfred_ ,' ad nauseam for days at a time, trying to get Mattie to do it too because it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it, come on! No. Al can't take French.

"Mattie? You okay?"

Mattie blinks. He's been doing that a lot today, floating between worlds, trying to keep them all straight in his head. Now he is here, with Al, in their bedroom, and he has math homework he needs to finish.

"Yeah," he says. "I'm fine."

Al's face softens. "I'm gonna tell Arthur the truth, you know."

Mattie sighs and rubs his temples. "I know."

"Just," Al yawns and stretches, "Not tonight. I had to get up at six-thirty this morning and there is _nothing_ coming between me and my bed right now."

"Homework?" Mattie suggests, as Al climbs back up onto his bed.

"Shut up, nerd," Al replies, tossing a sock at him—lord knows where he found it—"What do you think boring classes are for, anyway?" Seeing Mattie's look of disapproval, however, he relents, "Most of my teachers didn't assign real homework. Just some 'get familiar with the text' BS. I figure I can wing that."

Mattie rolls his eyes and returns to his own studies. In what seems an impossibly short amount of time, Al's snores are filling the room, and Mattie wonders how he can just fall asleep like that. If he ever lied to Arthur, it would keep him awake all night. He takes a deep breath and stops himself there. He needs to finish his homework and then he needs to go to bed. Whether or not Al keeps his word to tell the truth is a problem for tomorrow.

. . .

And tomorrow, it turns out, has problems enough.

First of all, Mattie's pre-algebra teacher isn't happy that he didn't show all his work, and gives him a stink-eye when he promises her he didn't use a calculator. He didn't even use Al for anything but that one multiplication problem. To be honest, he's not even sure what more work he was supposed to show, but he lets his teacher's criticism wash over him as he makes a mental note to write down every single step he does on his homework tonight.

Second of all, the only thing there was to pack for lunch was leftover soup, and it doesn't taste any better today than it did last night. Mattie manages to eat it all because, once again, he didn't have much in the way of breakfast, but it leaves him feeling sick for the rest of the afternoon, and the fact that he has gym on Thursdays really doesn't help with that.

Third of all, he misses Al. From the moment he wakes up and sees Al's bed already empty to the moment Al finally strides through the front door, sweaty and stained red with dirt, his brother's absence is like a huge, empty cold spot, and he's standing right in the middle of it. And with the looming prospect of Al's confession to Arthur, even his arrival can't quite shake the feeling of dread that hangs in Mattie's air.

"Hey, Mattie," Al says, dropping his gym bag on the floor and going to the sink to get a glass of water, "How was school?"

Mattie makes a face. "Meh. My pre-algebra teacher hates me."

"Pfft, nah. Nobody hates you, Matt."

"Except my pre-algebra teacher."

Al rolls his eyes. "Whatever." He stands next to Mattie, squinting at the numbers on the homework page. "You need help?"

"I'm good. She yelled at me for not showing all my work, so I'm making sure not to take any shortcuts this time."

Now it's Al's turn to make a face. "She sounds like a witch. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. These first few lessons are easy, anyway." Mattie looks up from the problem he's been working on. "How was, um, 'soccer?'"

"Really good." Al's eyes are shining, and his whole face with them. "So good, Mattie. I always knew I'd be great at baseball."

"So are you, uh, gonna talk to Arthur?"

Al cringes slightly and glances towards the hallway. "Is he in his office?" he asks, avoiding the actual question.

"I guess so," Mattie shrugs, "I haven't seen him since I've been home."

The kitchen was clean and there was a bowl with bits of chicken and noodle in the sink when Mattie got home, so he figured Arthur had managed to eat lunch, and he sat down to do his homework right away. Arthur hasn't been down since then, but it's only—Mattie checks the clock—a little after four, so he's not worried. Maybe he should've gone upstairs to say hello, but he didn't want to bother Arthur is he was working, or sleeping like he was yesterday.

"Okay," Al replies, still eyeing the kitchen doorway, as though he expects Arthur to step through at any moment. "Well, I'll go take a shower now."

"And then?" Mattie prompts.

Al sighs. "And then I'll talk to him. I promise. Okay?"

Mattie nods, satisfied, and returns to his homework. Al picks up his gym bag and trudges out of the kitchen; Mattie can half-hear him clumping up the stairs. He waits for the sounds of the bathroom door shutting and the shower beginning to run, but they never come. What he does hear, with sudden, perfect, heart-stopping clarity, is the sound of of Arthur's voice, ringing through the house.

"Alfred!"

Mattie closes his eyes as the feeling of nausea returns—this time, not from the soup.

"What happened to your shirt? Your shorts? Your—What happened?"

Why does Arthur need to shout? Mattie doesn't want to hear this fight. But he doesn't want to not hear it either. And ("Why were you playing baseball? Didn't you have _soccer practice_?") he certainly doesn't want to just hear Arthur's half of it. So, against his better judgement, he tiptoes out of the kitchen and stands at the bottom of the stairs. Listening.

"Don't be mad," Al is saying—pleading, almost—"It wasn't like I planned it. I just saw the flyers and decided to go for it. It's not like I had anything to lose."

"Except a place on the soccer team." Arthur's words are sharp and cold, and even though he was expecting this, Mattie is still taken aback by how harsh they sound. "What were you thinking?"

"Look." Al has snapped; Mattie can hear it in his voice. Street-dweller Al—defiant Al, adult Al—is here. And there will be no backing down. "I. Don't. Like. Soccer. I never have. But you wanted me to play. So I did. And it was fine, whatever. But now I have a chance to do something I've always wanted to do, and I'm gonna take it."

There's a long pause, then Arthur's voice again, low, defeated. "But you were so good."

"Yeah." Now Al's voice is the cold one. "I'm good at sports. Doesn't mean I like all of them."

An even longer pause. Mattie can feel the silence reverberating in his bones and he doesn't even know why he's still standing here. Why did he ever think he wanted to hear this? Why did he ever think he might want to know what Arthur's most broken sigh would sound like?

"Why didn't you just tell me the truth?" There is no anger in Arthur's voice now—not even disappointment—only a quiet plea to understand.

Whatever Al says in reply is too quiet for Mattie to hear, no matter how he strains his ears, but he can make a pretty good guess when he hears Arthur's response.

"Alfred." Arthur sighs. "Am I a little disappointed that you don't want to play soccer? Yes. But I'm more disappointed that you lied to me."

"Oh my god." Al sounds almost like he's trying not to laugh, and Mattie can't for the life of him see what's funny about this. "You're 'disappointed.' You're _disappointed_? Oh my god, Arthur, who do you think you are? My dad?"

Dead silence reigns in the house, like no silence Mattie has ever heard before. Here it is. The real struggle, at last, out in the open: that Al has never had a father, and will never think of Arthur as one. They've been skirting around it for years, since before Mattie came to them, and now, suddenly, they can't ignore it any longer. Because of the littlest thing. Because Al decided to play baseball instead of soccer.

No, Mattie reminds himself, not because Al decided. Because Al lied. Lies break everything. Little lies, like what Al did after school yesterday. And big lies. Like 'forever.' The former just fell apart, and in this moment, Mattie knows the latter is just about to.

Arthur's reply cuts through the silence, and though his words are confident, his voice is brittle.

"No, Alfred, I am not your father. But I am your legal guardian, and until you leave my house, I am responsible for you and you will answer to me."

Mattie can't see Al, but he can imagine the cold contempt on his face as he speaks the next two words.

"Watch me."

It doesn't make logical sense, but Mattie is in no doubt what Al means, and he thinks Arthur probably isn't either. _If_ Al stays—'until you leave my house' still echoes threateningly in Mattie's ears—gone are the days when his defiances could be dismissed as isolated instances of rebellion. The thinly veiled power struggle is over, and now it's open season on authority. And maybe Arthur can live with that. Mattie can't.

At long last, the bathroom door slams shut and the shower starts running. Mattie creeps back to his seat at the kitchen table, and when Arthur comes downstairs to stand at the sink and gulp down two aspirin, he tries to look as though he's very focused on drawing a number line.

"Matthew…"

"What?" Mattie tries his hardest not too look up too fast or sound too agitated.

Arthur seems to hesitate. Then: "How was school today?"

"Oh, it was good." Mattie's trying not to babble, but he can't quite help itself. "I got a 100 on my English quiz and a ninety on my math homework, and my team won at dodge ball during gym—"

"Alfred and I are fine, Matthew," Arthur cuts in, and he sounds almost irritated.

Mattie purses his lips. "I didn't say anything about you and Al."

"Did you know?"

"I told him he had to tell you the truth."

"Was he planning this?"

Mattie stares. "No! He told you that!"

Arthur, to his credit, doesn't ask Mattie how he knows what Al said. Mattie plows ahead, not sure where the words are coming from.

"It's not like this was some big scheme that I was in on, like 'Oh, let's trick Arthur, haha.' He saw the flyer, he went to the practice. He told me yesterday; I told him he had to tell you the truth. That's all. And even if it _was_ a plan, and even if I _had_ known about it, I wouldn't tell you. I've never taken sides in your fights, and I'm not starting now!"

Arthur turns away, and Mattie thinks they're done, but then he hears Arthur say something, so quietly he almost misses it.

"Yes you have."

"What?"

"You've always taken sides," Arthur says, turning back and looking him dead in the eye, "You've always been on Alfred's side."

And all of a sudden, Mattie knows what it's like to be Al. Not to be good at sports and make friends easily—not that part—but to stand up and speak for himself and be treated like an adult. He's always been a child in Arthur's eyes. He's never had a serious conversation with him without his guardian bending down so they were on the same level. He's never had Arthur stand above him and talk to him like he's tall enough to look him in the eye. And he's not sure how he got here now, but he might as well play the part. He stands. He doesn't speak. He turns his back on Arthur and makes for the kitchen doorway, where the marks on the wood stop at "Alfred, 12 yr" and "Matthew, 11 yr."

"Where are you going?" Arthur demands.

"Out."

Mattie doesn't turn back, doesn't ask for permission. He's never used his most frigid tone when talking to Arthur—he's rarely even used it when talking to Al—but he uses it now, and Arthur doesn't call after him, doesn't follow him as he opens the front door and steps out onto the street.

In early September, the afternoon is still oppressively warm, but the fierce heat only feeds the new fierceness burning inside him, and so instead of wavering on the front step, Mattie marches down the sidewalk, not sure where he's going but that's okay. He's pretty sure he won't fit in the little playhouse at the park anymore, but—to his surprise—he finds he doesn't want to hide. He just wants to get away, and think. The park, however, is still a convenient place: quiet, relatively abandoned, and supplied with abundant swings in the shade of an oak tree. It's on one of these swings that Mattie makes his refuge. He pushes off the ground and into the air, pumping his legs and swinging higher and higher, faster and faster, until all he can hear is the wind in his ears and he can't even keep his eyes open, and he loses himself.

Slowly, eventually, he opens his eyes and comes back to earth. His feet are solidly on the ground, and he recalls where he is and where he came from. Of course, it helps that Al is standing right in front of him. He's not saying anything. He's just watching him. Waiting. Mattie bites his lip and looks at the ground; the fierceness is returning, and he can feel it urging him to let it loose on his brother. He clenches his fists until the chains of the swing dig into his palm and swallows hard.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, with as much indifference as he can manage.

"Arthur sent me. Can I—?" Al gestures at the swing next to Mattie's.

Mattie says nothing, but Al takes his silence as permission.

"What happened?"

"Nothing." One word answers have always been Mattie's armor of choice, and despite the anger still curling in his chest, he can feel his defenses going up.

"That's crap, Mattie, and we both know it. How much did you hear?"

The anger is giving way to tears, and Mattie hates himself for it. "Everything," he whispers, because he doesn't trust his normal voice not to break.

"Damn, Matt." Arthur runs his hands through his hair, and it's strange how much, in this of all moments, he looks like Arthur. "You know we didn't really meant any of it—"

"Yes you did," Mattie cuts him off forcefully, "You meant all of it."

Al is silent. Mattie is right, and they both know it. He and Arthur may not have meant to say the things they did, but they weren't empty words. They were words that had been hiding beneath the surface for years now, just waiting for an opportunity to breach. And they found their opportunity. Over such a little thing it almost makes Mattie want to laugh. Such a little thing is about to destroy their whole world. Their forever. Mattie never quite believed in that forever, of course, but maybe—just maybe—he had begun to hope.

"I can't stay," he says suddenly.

"What?" Al looks up, and for the first time in this whole mess, there is real fear in his eyes.

"I can't stay, Al. Not like this. Not with all this—this—shit," Al looks slightly shocked, but Mattie ignores him, "out in the open. I can't live here knowing that you're one more fight away from leaving. Or being kicked out. I can't do it." Al tries to interrupt, but Mattie presses on. "I don't know where I'll go, or what I'll do, but I can't stay. I'm gonna go, Al, for real this time. You can come, if you want to."

The silence extends for several long moments, both boys studying the ground intently, until finally Mattie dares to look over at where Al sits, very rigidly, on the swing beside him. His jaw is working furiously and his eyes shine with what might be tears and what might be anger. Mattie's money is on both, but he figures Al just needs a minute to collect his thoughts, and then he'll speak.

"I apologized to Arthur."

Mattie starts. "What?"

"I apologized to Arthur," Al repeats, digging his new blue and white sneakers into the dirt, "I told him I was sorry I skipped soccer tryouts and that I lied to him. I told him—" Here Al pauses and grits his teeth together. "I told him that it was a mistake, and that I knew baseball was expensive and I shouldn't have given up soccer to play it. I told him that it wouldn't be right to even think of asking him for the money to play baseball after all this, and that I would give it up right now. He's—It's—We're okay now."

Mattie looks away as Al brushes surreptitiously at his eyes, pretending not to notice the twin damp spots in the dusty earth by his feet. He wants to cry too. He wants to cry so badly, but he screws his eyes shut and bites his bottom lip until he thinks he can taste blood. It's not his right to cry now. It's Al who made the sacrifice, Al who swallowed his pride, Al who gave up his dream to make peace. Al who could have packed his bags and run, who could have picked one last fight and been sent away, but instead is being sent to bring Mattie home. Mattie, who, next to Al, suddenly feels cowardly and selfish.

"Why?" he asks, and it's as much an accusation as it is a question. _Why are you here to bring me back when we both could run? Why are you here to make me feel guilty when you're the one who lied and fought? Why, after all this, does Arthur still trust you to bring me home? Why do you suddenly get to be the hero? Why are you so strong and good, and I'm not?_

"Why what? Why did I apologize?" Mattie doesn't say anything, but Al sighs and keeps talking anyway. "I wasn't going to. I honestly wasn't. I was so mad—"

He cuts himself off abruptly and takes a deep breath, and Mattie knows that, whatever Al may say, he is still angry; somewhere beneath the calm, the storm is still seething.

"But Mattie," he continues after a moment, "What else could I do? Where else could I go?"

At this, Mattie looks up. This was not something he expected to hear.

"Al," he says with disbelief, "You lived on the streets when you were _five_."

Al looks away, studying something on the horizon. "Yeah. I was five. That was a long time ago, Mattie. I haven't lived on the streets in almost ten years. Well, more like nine, but that's not the point. Sure, Arthur's can be a jerk, but I've lived with him almost as long as I can remember. And he's not a bad foster parent. I just don't always get along with him. I can live with that. Mattie," At this point, he gets up off the swing and stands in front of Mattie, hands on his shoulders, like he did last night. "I promise I will not leave this house until I turn eighteen. That's when I can get out of the system, and I'll get out right then and not a moment later. But not a moment sooner, either. I will be right here, with you, until then."

Mattie shoots up off of his swing and straight into his brother's arms before he even really knows what he's doing. And as he feels the worn softness of Al's gray hoody under his cheek, he lets himself cry. First silent tears, then violent sobs that shake them both as they stand alone in the middle of the abandoned playground.

"I—" Mattie tries to get out between sobs, "I just—I—I don't know what I'd do—what I'd do—if you left. I can't—can't even go to school without—without missing you and I—I just—"

"Shhh," Al soothes, rubbing his back, "I know. I could never leave without you, either." He holds Mattie at arms' length and smiles. "Hey. Hey. Look at me, Mattie. Hey. You're my brother. We gotta stick together."

Almost accidentally, Mattie laughs, although is comes out somewhere more between a snort and a choking noise. Al laughs too.

"What?"

"Oh nothing," Mattie says, wiping his eyes, "Just something Arthur said."

A shadow seems to cross Al's face momentarily, but it's gone before Mattie can be sure. "Why," he asks with a crooked smile, "What did Arthur say?"

"He said—Well, first I said that I had never picked sides. You know, in your fights. But he told me no, that I've always been on your side."

Al frowns. "Why is that funny?"

"It's not really. It's just—I got mad at him, but he was right. I _have_ always been on your side."

Al laughs again and reaches out to ruffle Mattie's hair. "Good to know. Let's go home. I'm starving."

Mattie scrubs his eyes once more and the two boys head back across the street, side by side.

_It's really the only side to be on._

. . .

That night, Mattie sets his alarm for six-thirty. He gets ready and eats breakfast with Al and walks him to the bus stop. Then he walks back to the house. He packs up his books, setting _Tom Sawye_ r carefully on top, then pours a cup of tea and picks up a scone that Arthur baked fresh last night. Leaving his bag at the kitchen table, he makes his way upstairs to Arthur's office, where he lets himself in and sets the cup and scone on Arthur's desk without a word. Arthur smiles. Then he stands and wraps Mattie in a tight hug.

"I love you, Matthew," he whispers in his ear before giving him one more squeeze and letting him go.

And Mattie wants to say it back, he really does, but the words catch in his throat a moment too long, and then the school bus' croaking horn is sounding at the corner of Washington and Maple. So he settles for "Goodbye," before racing down the stairs and out the door. He runs all the way to the bus stop, barely making it before the doors start to close.

"Mattie boy," the bus driver says, shaking her head, "One of these days I'm gonna leave your ass behind."

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

The first day of Christmas vacation dawns clear and cold and—screaming bloody murder?

Mattie shoots upright in bed, whacking his head on the lamp clipped to his headboard and sending _A Farewell to Arms_ tumbling off his face and onto the floor. He squints against the shards of white light that cut between the slats of the blinds on the window, wondering what woke him. Then he hears it again, a shockingly unholy sound for this blessed time of year.

"Oh my god! Shit! My eye, my fucking—Shit!"

Mattie fumbles for his glasses on top of the bookshelf that doubles as a nightstand, only to realize that the strange pinching sensation between his eyes is his glasses, pressed into the bridge of his nose all night by the book on top of them.

"Arthur, can we just put down the goddamn tree and focus on _me_ for a minute?!"

Al's bed is empty, which makes sense, since he's swearing like a sailor downstairs, but doesn't make sense, since it's—Mattie squints at the digital clock on the bookshelf—eight twenty-three on a Saturday morning. Never mind Arthur, the apocalypse itself couldn't rouse Al this early on a Saturday. Yet floating up the stairs is the low murmur of fiercely whispered bickering presumably triggered by Al's colorful language. Mattie sighs. It's too early for this. Weekend mornings are always a respite from the continuous petty quarrel he lives in, if only because Al normally can't be moved from bed until noon. Today, apparently, they're getting a head start.

"Alfred, so help me if you drop this—!"

Mattie hears something that sounds like "too fucking late," accompanied by a loud rustling sound and a _thump_. Any hopes of going back to sleep and ignoring the ruckus are effectively dashed as the murmurs turn to extremely loud raised voices that Mattie still can't make out because they're shouting over each other. He sighs once more, then swings his legs over the edge of the bed and slides to the ground, landing on his toes and bending his knees slightly to absorb the impact of the roughly two-foot drop. The hard wood floor is cool beneath his bare feet, and his toes curl instinctively at the temperature change. Grabbing his red hoodie from where it hangs on the bedpost, he picks _A Farewell to Arms_ up off the floor, throws it onto the bed, then shuffles out of the bedroom and down the stairs, pulling the sweatshirt over his head as he goes. At the bottom of the stairs, he pauses.

"If you had just listened to me—" Arthur is insisting.

"I was listening to you," Al retorts, "I listened to you and you _stabbed me in the eye_."

"Don't try and pin your clumsiness on me!"

"Clumsy? Who's clumsy?"

"Ahem." Mattie steps into the sitting room.

Both Al and Arthur freeze in the middle of shouting at each other over the top of an enormous fir tree. Arthur is holding stubbornly onto the trunk, but the top of the tree drags on the ground because Al is standing with one hand over his right eye and the other halted in midair, no doubt making some half-finished angry gesture. Three eyes are turned expectantly towards Mattie, but he ignores all of them. He is staring with delight at the needly green disaster on the floor.

They didn't have a tree last year. They didn't have much of anything last year, in fact. Christmas dinner was Chinese take-out and presents were cheap chocolate and new shoes. They practically lived in the sitting room because Arthur had turned off the heat to save money, and the only way to stay warm was to keep close to the fireplace and to each other. Things were…tense, and Mattie doesn't think they ever quite recovered. He still remembers with sickening clarity the sight of Alfred walking out the door on Christmas day, the reek of alcohol on his breath when he staggered back home long after midnight, and the sound of his own sobs as he cried himself to sleep once Al was finally passed out on the sitting room couch. To this day, he doesn't know where Al got his hands on a bottle of vodka; he's never asked. And he's never told his brother how Arthur flung a tea cup at the wall and left the shards on the floor for Mattie to clean up once he had taken a double dose of his sleeping pills and braved the drafty upstairs to get away from where Alfred's shiny new sneakers sat untouched in front of the fireplace. He doesn't remember what the fight was about—he almost never does—but he remembers thinking that this was it, that Al was gone for good, and knowing, for the first time, that he couldn't follow. He couldn't leave Arthur alone.

All this goes through his mind in the blink of an eye, and then he's back in the doorway to the sitting room, looking at the Christmas tree that Arthur and Al are bringing in at eight in the morning. For him, he knows. A surprise. Nothing else would've gotten Al out of bed at this hour, certainly nothing Arthur wanted done for himself. Mattie is the one soft spot left in Al's hardened exterior, the wall he's been building around himself like a second skin for years now, to keep Arthur out. It's not arrogance or self-importance on Mattie's part to say it. It's simply the truth. And even that chink in the armor has been shrinking.

Al sighs. "Come on, Matt. Couldn't you have stayed upstairs a little longer?"

Mattie doesn't respond immediately. He slips in front of Al and hoists the fallen end of the tree up on his shoulder, signaling Arthur to start moving again, before he glances over his shoulder and says coolly, "Couldn't you have been a little more quiet?"

Al flips him off with the hand not covering his eye—more out of habit, Mattie suspects, than actual anger—and stalks across the hall to the kitchen, where they can hear him rummaging around in the freezer. He returns a few minutes later with a bag of peas over his eye and flops into Arthur's arm chair.

"A little to the left," he suggests, waving a hand vaguely as Mattie and Arthur try to wrangle the tree into its stand, "No, a little to the right. No, a little to the left. No—"

"Seriously, Al," Mattie groans, "Shut up."

"I'm just trying to help."

"Well, no offense, but I'm not gonna trust the one-eyed wonder—"

"There!"

Arthur's voice rings out as the tree finally slips into the stand with a satisfying thunk. He and Mattie step back, admiring their handy work. It's a beautiful tree, tall and full-bodied, colored a rich, vibrant green that gives a new air of life to the tired sitting room. The sharp smell of pine mingles with the scents of dust and stale tea, tingling in Mattie's nostrils, waking him up and causing a smile to spread across his face. He glances at Al, who catches his eye and gives him a crooked grin.

"Looks good, Mattie," he says, and Mattie starts. Al hasn't called him that in months, and now it hurts, how happy it makes him to hear it again.

"Better than it would've if I'd left it up to the one-eyed wonder," he replies with a small smile. "But seriously, is your eye okay?"

Al shrugs. "Eh. I'll live."

"Well," Arthur cuts in, dusting off his hands and turning to the boys, "Since we're all up, shall I make breakfast?"

Ten minutes later, the two boys are sitting at the kitchen table with steamy hot mugs of tea, Arthur is standing at the counter mixing pancake batter, and Mattie is wondering if maybe this is a magical time of year. Of course, there's always last year to consider. Mattie decides it's best to reserve judgement as the smell of butter sizzling in a pan comes over him in a wave of nostalgia. It's silly, but all of a sudden he wants to cry. Because everything is perfect: the three of them in the kitchen together on a Saturday morning with hot tea and the smell of pancakes as the heating whistles merrily through old pipes and a few flurries of snow drift by the window over the sink. But at the same time, everything is wrong. Mugs of tea fit comfortably in hands that used to be too small to hold them steady; feet that used to dangle, kicking against the legs of chairs, now drag and tap absently on the floor. No idle, cheerful chatter passes between the two boys sitting at the table, and the man at the stove is hunched and weary. The past and the present have, at best, an uneasy truce, as they meet in the kitchen and breathe down Mattie's neck, reminding him that things are not as lovely as they seem—as if he didn't already know that. Because when Arthur serves the pancakes, he doesn't look Al in the eye, and Al doesn't say thank you. And when Arthur asks Mattie how his last day of classes went, he doesn't then turn and ask Al the same question, and Al doesn't volunteer the information.

But the pancakes are warm, and they taste like butter and maple syrup and childhood, and if Mattie closes his eyes, he can imagine, if only for a moment, that the three of them are happy.

"Matt, what are you doing?"

Mattie opens his eyes and glares at Al, but the anger only serves as a cover for the sting he feels from Al's questioning tone. There was a time, he thinks, when Al understood Mattie's occasional need to escape into his imagination, and even scolded Arthur if he tried to interrupt his reveries. Now he can't tell if Al has stopped understanding, or just stopped caring, but more and more it seems to him that his brother is becoming a part of the world that he tries so hard to keep out when he shuts his eyes.

"Alfred, leave him alone."

Al shoots Arthur a dirty look but holds his tongue, for which Mattie is eternally grateful. It may be past nine o'clock now, but it's still too early for the fighting to start. Honestly, Mattie suspects that Al is simply too tired to rise to his usual level of belligerence, having gotten up a good four or five hours earlier than his regular weekend schedule permits. And the significance of that is not lost on him. Al sacrificed his sleep for Mattie's Christmas tree, for Mattie's happiness. And he is even more grateful for that than for Al's silence. Nevertheless, he's not about to let his brother off the hook just yet.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asks casually, as Al dumps his plate in the sink and heads for the kitchen door.

"Back to bed, dude. I'm fucking tired." He glances at Arthur, whether in accusation or apprehension Mattie's not sure. Either way, Arthur—who has begun washing dishes—ignores him.

"Oh no you're not," Mattie laughs, downing the rest of his tea and standing to block Al's path, "You're gonna help us decorate that tree."

"Come on, Matt. I really just wanna sleep—"

"You've got, like, two and half weeks to sleep. But you've only got one day to decorate the Christmas tree. Please, Al."

He softens his voice on the last two words, and gets the desired reaction. A mixture of guilt and resignation flashes across Al's face, quickly covered by a roll of the eyes, and Mattie wonders if he knows that it wasn't just an act, wonders if he knows how easy it was for Mattie to let that note of pleading slip into his voice and call to his brother with the timid words of a child. Al's indifferent attitude has only ever been a front, but it's one that Mattie thinks he used to be better at seeing past. Or maybe the overwhelming, vibrant enthusiasm that used to lead to harebrained adventures and wildly imaginative games involving three sports rolled into one really has died down, stifled by years of tension and restraint, now finding its only outlet in acts of defiance and outbursts of swearing. Maybe there's nothing to see past that front anymore.

But as the boys cough and gasp their way downstairs with bins and boxes covered in dust, something in Al seems to come alive. It starts with a gleam in his eyes as he uncovers a plastic bag full of old silver tinsel,

"Oh man! I love this stuff," he crows, and right away Mattie knows not much tinsel is going to end up on the tree, but he really—almost aggressively—doesn't care.

Instead, he picks up a box of glittery gold and silver glass balls and begins hanging them in well spaced intervals around the middle of the tree. The smell of pine up close is heady and almost intoxicating, and Mattie lets it surround him, permeate his space, fuel his creative spirit. A Christmas tree made of jingle bells here, a golden star there. A cloud of tiny red, green and white balls floating near the top, a collection of blown-glass ornaments, hand-painted with scenes of carolers, shepherds and wisemen, suspended like their own little microcosms in the space between the lower branches. When Mattie steps back the tree seems, if possible, more alive that it did before, and now he's quite sure—

"Hey Matt! Check out my new hair!"

Al has fashioned himself a wig of tinsel. It's falling off in clumps, and soon there's nothing but a few strands tangled in his blond mop of ill-groomed hair, but Al is smiling, a grin that threatens to split his face in two as he stands in a pile of glittery silver and begs with dancing eyes for Mattie to laugh.

Yes. It's definitely a magical time of year.

When Arthur doesn't draw the same conclusion, however, it isn't much of a surprise. Mattie isn't sure where he's been—probably in his office—but he comes into the sitting room bearing coils and coils of lights, only to groan at the sight of Alfred swimming in tinsel. And in a moment so fleeting he almost misses it, Mattie can see the walls come up. Al's smile collapses into a bored frown and the light in his eyes disappears behind a mask of cool disinterest and vague contempt.

"What?" he drawls, "Too festive for you?" A vicious smile spreads across his face. "Or not festive enough?"

Suddenly, there's tinsel everywhere. Al scoops up the pile from his feet and flings out the silvery strands in every direction. If flutters through the air, settling mostly on the floor, but some drapes over the furniture, and some catches on Arthur's chunky woolen sweater and his hair. A solitary thread hangs limply from his left eyebrow. Silence falls over the room, heavier than snow, and colder. Al stands tall, facing Arthur with his back stiff and his fists clenched, while Mattie tries his utmost to sink into the floor. Maybe this time he can actually do it.

"Alfred," Arthur's voice is deadly calm, "Go to your room."

"What?" Al actually looks slightly stunned.

"You heard me."

Al lets loose a short bark of laughter. "Seriously?"

He looks to Mattie, as if for support, or confirmation that he is indeed hearing this. Mattie shrinks as far behind the half-decorated tree as is humanly possible. Al turns back to face Arthur.

"Are you fucking serious right now?"

For a moment everything stops. Mattie can feel his heart stop beating and his breath catch in his throat. He watches the cracks spread over the mask of composure Arthur wears, and he could probably say exactly how many hundredths of a second it takes for that mask to fly apart. He braces himself as the storm breaks.

"Do you know what, Alfred?" Arthur explodes, flinging tinsel as he flings his arms out in anger, "I've had it up to _here_ with you. With your attitude and your smart answers and the _language_. Every other word that comes out of your mouth, and I'm sick of it! So yes, I'm serious. Go. To. Your. Room."

Al is so tense that Mattie can see him trembling from across the room. His right hand, curled into a fist, spasms violently. Al and Arthur's fights have never gotten physical, but in this moment, Mattie can almost see it: a blow to the face, bloody knuckles, a bruise that lasts for days. Unbidden, more images spring to mind: words on a screen, local headlines. Domestic violence, assault, abuse. Those poor, troubled foster kids. It never ends well with them. All this in a moment, but in the next, Al is stalking through the doorway and up the stairs, his parting blow nothing but the last fistful of tinsel flung contemptuously at Arthur's feet like spittle. And it's a terrible thing, but Matthew can't help feeling relieved, until the sound of the bedroom door slamming echoes through the house, shaking the walls and Mattie's whole body. His heart is still pounding as Arthur takes a deep breath and holds out the strings of lights like some kind of peace offering. Mattie stares back with something akin to horror.

He wants to confront Arthur, call him out, ask him how he can do this. How he can say these things and then turn around and return to decorating the tree like nothing happened, like Al isn't upstairs cursing Arthur under his breath and Mattie isn't cowering against the wall like a frightened puppy. Like Arthur doesn't even notice the slight tremor in his own hands and the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes. How he can look to Mattie for peace and forgiveness when the one he's wronged is upstairs. Mattie wants to say all this, can feel it rising to the tip of his tongue, but already knows it won't make it past his lips. He looks at the lights in Arthur's hands and the plea in his eyes and can only manage two words.

"I can't," he mumbles, looking at the ground because he can't see the last spark of hope leave Arthur's eyes.

"I'm sorry." Arthur's voice comes with a note of desperation that Mattie knows he can't assuage because he's not the one Arthur should be apologizing to. "Matthew, I'm sorry."

Mattie traces Al's footsteps, walking past Arthur to the door, still staring steadfastly at the ground. But unlike Al, he stops in the doorway and turns back.

"I just need to get out for a while," he says, and there's no request for permission in his tone, only an implied assurance that he'll be back eventually.

Arthur only stands there, hands dropping to his sides to the tune of hundreds of tiny lightbulbs clattering against the floorboards. Mattie doesn't wait for a response. He stops only to slip on his boots and pull his hood up around his ears before opening the door and stepping out onto the street.

He doesn't think about where he's going. He just starts walking, and today he turns right, instead of left towards the bus stop and the old park. He needs to go somewhere new, somewhere unconnected with Al and Arthur and the mess that is his life right now. He's sure he's been down this way before—he must have been—but right now he can't remember, and everything looks fresh and new in the grey light of a morning snow shower. The flakes stick to his sleeves, burning cold needles against his arms, but he welcomes the numbness that comes as his shivers subside. A few drifters land on his glasses, and some even make it behind the lenses and catch on his eyelashes, but for once he doesn't mind the fog that obscures his vision as the tiny crystals turn to steam. He doesn't want to see or feel or hear anything. The silence, however, is a mixed blessing, because with the stillness comes the sounds of his own thoughts, that even the heavy winter hush cannot silence. In an unconscious effort to escape, Mattie quickens his stride. Faster and faster he goes, until his walk turns into a run and his hood falls away, allowing the air to rush past his ears and fill them with pure noise until there is no room for any thought.

Unlike Al, however, Mattie is no athlete, and it's not long before his breathing grows ragged from the cold air that burns his throat with every gasp. He stops, bent over to nurse the stitch in his side, and rests with his hands on his knees. Once his breathing returns to normal and his lungs no longer feel like they are being stabbed with frozen knives, he stands up straight and looks around. He honestly had no idea Maple street went on this far. Or maybe he crossed onto another street and didn't even notice. It's anyone's guess at this point, because he honestly doesn't know where he is. Six year-old Mattie would have been frightened. Sixteen year-old Mattie just doesn't care. He thinks he ran all this way in a straight line, but if he turned around now and walked back down the street and didn't end up back at home, he doesn't know how much it would matter. To him or to anybody else. It crosses his mind briefly that he never actually told Arthur he'd be back, but he's still wearing pajamas and has no food, money or ID on him, so running away is hardly practical. He'll go home eventually.

Eventually happens sooner than expected when Mattie realizes he can't really feel his toes, his fingers or his face, which he supposes is probably a problem. He's walked for about five or so minutes since he stopped the first time, and also discovered that he is, in fact, still on Maple Street. Which is good news, since he'd like to get home with minimal frostbite, and just walking straight back down the street will probably make that easier. He turns around and faces the way he came. It looks no different that the way he was facing before—gray morning light, mailboxes planted in neatly kept patches of grass in front of respectable brick townhouses, a dusting of snow over everything—but it seems somehow more dull, even ominous. His fingers are growing stiff, however, curled inside the sleeves of his sweatshirt for warmth, so he takes as deep a breath as he can manage and starts walking.

Going back seems to take much longer, although Mattie supposes that's because he ran part of the way when he left. The silence grows ever more oppressive as he begins to recognize the houses around him, but he's too cold and tired to run this time. At last, he's standing on the front steps, willing himself to open the door, telling himself it's just the stiffness in his hands slowing him down. He rests his fingers on the knob for a moment before tightening his grip and turning in one swift motion. The door opens silently—thank goodness they haven't put up the jingle-bell wreath yet—and Mattie slips inside, gasping at the sudden warmth that envelops him. He feels the crust of snow begin to melt from his clothes and his muscles begin to relax as he eases the door shut, but a moment later comes the deep, tingling itch of numb flesh coming back to life and with it, the sound of raised and angry voices coming from the sitting room. Mattie freezes again instantly.

"You have got to learn that the world doesn't revolve around you, Alfred." No response. "Not everything I do is part of an express scheme to ruin your life."

"Could've fooled me." Al's voice is acid but Mattie almost wants to roll his eyes. Al can't possibly believe that. He's just saying it to get a rise out of Arthur, but it works.

"Why do you do that? Why do you have to contradict everything I say? Why do you have to make everything into a fight?"

"Oh yeah," Al butts in, "Because you were being real friendly just then."

"I am not your enemy, Alfred. I'm on your side!"

"The hell you are."

A heartbeat's silence. Then, "What?"

"The hell you're on my side. I'm sorry—" he doesn't sound sorry at all— "but that's bullshit. If you were on my side, you wouldn't have looked at my report card when I came home with B's in my honors courses and asked me why they weren't A's. You wouldn't have agreed with my precalc teacher when I scraped a C and she suggested I stay back this year. I _passed_ that class, Arthur. I should be in calculus now and you know it. If you were on my side, you would've found some way besides keeping me from taking a class I _need_ to get into a good engineering school.

"If you were on my side, Arthur, you would've been proud of me when I had the chance to make varsity baseball in my _freshman year_. You wouldn't have looked me in the eye and told me it was soccer or nothing."

"I never actually said that—"

"Oh my god, Arthur," and there it is again, that short, cold laugh that makes Mattie want to throw up, "That's really not the point."

"Then what is the point? That you're still angry about something that happened over three years ago? That's not my fault, Alfred. I've only ever tried to do what was best for you! Both of you!"

"Both of us." Al's voice grows soft and mock-thoughtful, and Mattie all of a sudden wants very badly not to be hearing this. "Okay. Well. That explains why Mattie is still going to bookclub and I'm barely allowed to leave the house. Funny that you don't mind paying a monthly fee for his activities."

All the life that has been gradually seeping back into Mattie's body seems to drain away. He knows it's selfish, but this is what he's always been afraid of: that Al resents him, sees him as the favorite. The suspicion has always hurt, so he's somewhat prepared for the pain of hearing it out in the open. What he is not prepared for is the feeling of anger that comes along with it—and in turn the warm, intense vindication he feels when Arthur replies:

"Leave your brother out of this, Alfred. Your problems are not his fault."

"Problems. Problems?" Al seems to be choking around his words and Mattie can't tell if it's from tears, laughter or rage. "You think I have _problems_?" His voice takes on a high, mocking tone. "'Oh yes, poor Alfred. The troubled foster kid. He grew up on the streets and never learned to respect authority'" The hardness returns. "'Poor Alfred. He has _problems_.'"

"You disappear without telling me where you're going! You lie about where you've been! You stay out until ungodly hours and come home drunk! And I'm supposed to just let you—"

"That was one time!"

"And you don't think that's one time too many? How am I supposed to trust you now, when you go and do something so irresponsible, so bone-headedly stupid—"

"You—" and there's no doubt about it, those are definitely tears in Al's voice— "Have never. Trusted. Me."

The world is falling apart. Al doesn't cry. Rarely in front of Mattie. Never in front of Arthur—not since they were very small. The world is ending and Mattie's heart is breaking and his brief moment of anger is swallowed up in a flood of sympathetic tears that seem to rise from the very base of his chest to brim over his eyelids. Because he understands: Al is not angry. Not really. He is sad. He is lonely. He is a little boy who never got to be a child. And Mattie has always known this, but it's only now that he sees how much it has hurt his brother.

"I _had_ to trust you, Alfred. Mattie followed you around everywhere, did everything you did. I had no _choice_ but to trust you."

"Yeah." Al laughs shortly, and it's surprisingly strong, considering the lump that must be in his throat. "You really hated that didn't you?"

Something stirs in Mattie's memory. A chorus of anxious "be careful's." A photo album of worried looks. Hugs that lasted too long before Mattie stepped out the door to join Al and his friends. Low, stern murmurs when Arthur thought Mattie wasn't listening.

_"Take care of your brother."_

_"Look after Matthew."_

_"What happened, Alfred?"_

_"What did you do?"_

That last one repeats. Over and over again, from almost the first moment Mattie walked through Arthur's door to just yesterday when Mattie stalked up the stairs immediately after getting home from school. Al had nothing to do with it; Mattie had failed an algebra test again, and Arthur found that out later, but not before Al had slammed the door on yet another accusation.

"You hated that even though he was your favorite, he loved me better anyway." Al is on a terrible, destructive roll, and Mattie can't bear it anymore, but he can't stop listening anymore than Al can stop his voice from rising with every word that tumble past his quivering lips. "And you didn't understand that it was because he saw straight through your bullshit. He knew what you were doing, and he was on my side."

"Oh right. Sure." The composed veneer is finally, completely gone. Arthur is fighting fire with fire, vindictive words with more of the same. "You set him against me. From the very beginning you worked to convince him that I was the enemy."

"The only person." Al speaks heavily, forcefully, with great effort. "Convincing Mattie that you're the enemy. Is you. You, Arthur. You're the one looking at this like it's a war. All I wanted—god, all I ever wanted—was to be a normal kid who didn't fight with his dad—"

"I thought I wasn't your father."

Mattie hasn't moved, but he can vividly see the way Al's spine stiffens and his jaw sets. Or maybe that's his own back going rigid as he swallows back a gasp. Arthur's voice is short, cold, and nasty, flinging Al's own words back at his feet with nothing but intent to hurt.

"No." The tears are long gone, but so is the anger, and that's somehow so much worse. There is nothing at all behind Al's words. They are empty of all feeling, all human connection. "No. You're right. You're not. You never have been. And I'm leaving."

Floorboards creak, and Mattie thinks maybe he should be panicking, trying to escape, but he's so beyond that now. He's stuck in place, stuck on the words that chant coldly over and over again in the dumbfounded silence of his mind:

_I'm leaving._

"It doesn't matter what I do." Floorboards again, footsteps turning back, and Al is speaking, but it's far away and unimportant. Why is he still talking? What else is there to say? Why try to justify himself any further? And is that sadness creeping back into his voice?

"It's never good enough for you," he continues, and that's definitely sadness, maybe even a last-ditch plea, "I tried, Arthur. I tried so hard to make you happy and do what you wanted, but it was never enough. I was never well-behaved or quiet or smart or obedient enough for you. So you know what?" His voice grows hard once more and Mattie thinks he might just be sick because he knows the end is here. "Fuck it. I don't care what you think, and I don't care what you say. I'm gonna do what I want, and you can't stop me. I'm gonna go where I want and you can't keep me here."

"Alfred." Mattie can hear Arthur drawing up to his fullest height, and he doesn't understand how Arthur can possibly think this is the time for threats. "If you walk out that door now, you are never coming back."

Al's cold laugh is back, and oh god, how does is keep getting worse? Mattie can't understand it. At some point, doesn't it have to stop getting worse?

"I know," Al replies. "I wasn't planning on it."

Obviously. Mattie might roll his eyes if this wasn't so emphatically not funny.

"You have nowhere to go!"

"Shows what you know." Al is walking, and it's only a matter of time before he's out in the hall in front of Mattie, and Mattie still can't move. Although this comment does give him a start. Where does Al have to go? It's silly, but it hurts, that Mattie doesn't know all Al's secrets. Where he goes, who his friends are now. No more than Arthur knows.

"You can't just leave." Arthur is grasping at straws now; Mattie can hear it. "You're not eighteen yet. You're still in the system. I'm—"

"You're what? My 'guardian?' I can take care of myself, Arthur."

"It's not legal!"

"Do you think I give a fuck?" The scorn in Al's voice is all too predictable at this point, and Mattie almost wishes Arthur would stop talking. He's not convincing anybody; he's making a fool of himself, and it's not right. Because he's not wrong, but he has lost. And maybe it's just time to give up. But he keeps going.

"I will call child services, Alfred. And they won't bring you back here. You will be back in the foster home before you know what's happening. You will never set foot in this house again."

Air seems to rush in and out of Mattie's lungs of its own accord; he doesn't think he can actually breathe anymore. Fire and iron glint in his mind's eye, cutting the ropes and burning what little bridge is left until there is none. Al is slipping away, and Arthur just let go. And Mattie stands helpless on the edge, watching his brother fall.

"No."

Al's voice is hard and completely self-assured. He may have fallen, but he's landed on his feet, and somehow he feels he's still on top. And Arthur knows it.

"What?"

"No," Al repeats evenly, almost gently, save for an unyielding coldness beneath the surface. "You won't call child services. If you know what's good for you, you will keep child services far away from me. Because if you don't, I'll tell them everything. I'll tell them all about last winter. How we almost froze to death because you lost all your money in a crazy trading scheme and you couldn't afford to heat the house. How Mattie caught the flu and you couldn't even buy cold medicine because you spent the last of our money on canned soup and sleeping pills. I'll tell them exactly how unfit you are to be a foster parent and I will get Mattie taken away. So if you love him at all—which you do, more than you ever wanted to control me—you will let me go."

This has gone far enough. Mattie doesn't know what moves him, because he certainly can't remember deciding to start moving forward, but suddenly he's standing in the doorway to the living room, and he doesn't know whether the warmth on his cheeks is anger, tears, or just the heat of the house against his possibly-frostbitten face. Whatever it is, however, it apparently terrifies Arthur and Al the minute they see him standing there, pale and flushed and clenching his fists so hard they can see the whiteness on his knuckles from across the room.

"Matthew—" Arthur says in an 'I-can-explain' tone of voice, at the same moment Al murmurs, "Shit, Mattie," but Mattie ignores them both.

"What the hell—" he begins, "What the _fuck_ is this?"

"Matthew," Arthur begins again, chidingly, and Mattie cannot take him seriously.

"You're kidding me right now, right Arthur?" he demands. "You think that now— _now_ —is the time to lecture me for my language? Really? No—" he barks as Arthur opens his mouth again, "—no. You are going to shut up and you are going to _listen to me._ Nobody ever listens to me, and that is about to change right. fucking. now.

"I'm gonna say it again: what the fuck is this? Why can't you guys ever talk out your issues like normal people? Why can't you just sit the fuck down and talk, without screaming, without threatening, without using _me_ as a bargaining chip? Ten. fucking. years. and you two have never once just sat and talked something out. Ten fucking years I've been walking in on screaming matches and awkward silences and conversations about me and I've had enough, enough _enough!_ "

Al and Arthur are staring at him with a mixture of fear and awe. His knuckles are bleeding. He's punched the doorframe, and the worn wood split the skin on every single finger of his right hand.

"Goddammit," he curses under his breath, then he brandishes his bloody fist at them. "This is your fault," he shouts, but the anger is dissipating and tears are threatening. "Your fault," he repeats, softly, brokenly, then he turns and flees up the stairs, leaving shocked silence behind him.

He stops halfway up to listen, waiting to hear the shouting resume, but there's nothing. He can't tell if that's a good or a bad sign but he doesn't really care. The tears have overpowered his stubbornness and he needs to hide them somewhere. In a way it's really too late for that, but after all, it's not a charade. When Al buries his face in his pillow and pretends to sleep while Mattie watches his shoulders hitch up and down—that's a charade. For Mattie it's just a security. It's a boundary; it's a container for all the things he can't let out. It's for his own good, and for his family's. He needs…he needs to keep it in. It's too big, too scary to let it out all the way. Just now, he let it loose. He needed to. But now it needs to go away again, and for that…well. He needs to be alone.

He reaches his room, and although some part of him urges him to slam the door, he shuts it carefully. No need to draw more attention to himself. He hauls himself up and falls face first onto his bed. He claws and bites at his pillow, trying to muffle the silent screams he feels building in his chest. Something is digging into his thigh; it's A Farewell to Arms. Was it really only a couple hours ago that he tossed it onto the bed when he got up? It seems ages. Whatever. He nudges the book out from under him and kicks it onto the floor. The pillow isn't working. He pounds it in frustration before sitting bolt upright and hugging himself almost frantically. He tries to slow his breathing, tries to calm his racing mind, but nothing works, and he takes his head in both hands, squeezing it, squeezing his eyes shut, opening his mouth and letting out a harsh, gargling sound that's the closest he can get to a scream without actually screaming. He rocks back and forth; maybe if he moves fast enough, he can outrun these thoughts. He's practically spasming, and his breathing grows ragged. This isn't working. New plan. He crosses his arms in front of him, sticking each hand up the opposite sleeve of his sweatshirt and digging his nails into the soft flesh of his scrawny forearms. Harder and harder he presses, trying to ground himself in something, even if it's just his own body. It's not working; the thoughts are telling him to dig deeper, deeper, to leave new marks next to the dozens of white crescent moons that already mark the insides of his arms. He drags his nails over his skin with a desperate growl. Why can't he get a hold of himself? Why does he always seem to end up here? Why can't he breathe, why can't he have a normal life? Why can't he, why can't he—

A knock sounds on the door, but apparently it was only a formality, because Arthur walks in a moment later, before Mattie even has a chance to shout "go away."

"Matthew?"

"What." It's not a question; it's a warning.

"Matthew, I think we should talk about what happened down th—"

"I'm not apologizing."

"No, no, Matthew." Arthur stands right next to the bed and Mattie grows rigid, staring down at his hands still balled into fists inside his sweatshirt sleeves, so his hair falls in his eyes and he doesn't have to look at his guardian, who is still talking. Why is he talking? "I just want to make sure you're okay. We didn't mean for you to hear all those things—"

"You know, can we not?" Even his own voice sounds far away in comparison to the ugly whispering in his head. He knows the words are coming from him, but it doesn't feel like it. It doesn't sound like it. It doesn't sound like him… "Can we just cut it with the bullshit apologies? It's not me hearing it that makes your conversation with Al super fucked up. Go apologize to Al. I mean yeah, you've screwed me up plenty, but not as much as him. I don't expect him to forgive you, but the least you can do is try." Arthur remains suspiciously silent, and Mattie feels a horrible dread creep over everything else in his brain. "What?"

Arthur looks away. "Alfred is gone," he says, and he almost manages to make it sound matter-of-fact.

" _What?!_ " Mattie is off the bed and on his feet before he has a moment to think. "You let him _go_? You let him—What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"Matthew I had to make sure you were okay—"

"Arthur, one of us is out in the snow, walking away without the intention of coming back, and it's not me. I'm fine. Alfred is not. And if you won't go after him, then I will." He's shoving his feet back into the boots that he kicked off sometime in the midst of his hysteria. Truth be told, he still feels pretty hysterical, but at least he has a purpose now.

"You are not fine." Arthur's voice is remarkably steady, all things considered.

"Oh, what, are you gonna forbid me to leave too?" Mattie tries to summon Alfred-level scorn, but his voice is shaking. "'Cause that worked out really well just now."

"You're not thinking straight; you can't go after him—"

"Oh my god—" Mattie lets out a slightly crazed laugh, "When was the last time anybody in this house was thinking straight? Alfred is _gone_. You _let him_ go. We are all so beyond making rational choices, Arthur. There aren't any left. And I'm going after Alfred."

"You won't change his mind—"

"No Arthur." His voice find some steadiness, because this he is sure of. " _You_ won't change his mind. And maybe I won't. But at least I have a chance."

He straightens up from adjusting his boots and stands patiently, unyieldingly before Arthur's frame blocking the doorway. At last, Arthur moves silently to the side. But as Mattie slips past him and heads for the stairs, he murmurs, almost too low for Mattie to hear:

"I always knew you were on his side."

The words are stupid and petty and really unnecessary, but Mattie turns to look at his guardian anyway. He looks old and tired, leaning against the doorframe, his eyes cast upwards as if in search of help, or perhaps just in helplessness. And the pity Mattie feels is what softens his final words.

"Yes," he replies with gentle firmness, before turning away. "Yes I am."

"Matthew."

Mattie stops again. He doesn't turn to face Arthur, but he waits. The words never come. He glances back. Arthur is still standing there, back to the doorframe, but now his eyes are closed, and Mattie knows that whatever he was going to say, he's now thought better of it. So he squares his shoulders and marches down the hallway, employing every scrap of energy to keep himself from running, whether to find Al or get away he's not sure. Down the stairs, grabbing his coat this time. Out the door, onto the sidewalk, still in those restrained, measured footsteps. Running won't get him anywhere if he doesn't know where he's going.

Where _is_ he going? Al can't have that much of a head start, but Mattie has no idea where his brother would go. He must have friends...or at least people of some sort or another that he can go to. Whether people who lure him into drinking and rebellion are really friends...well, that's a question for another time. Mattie has to focus on the matter at hand.

He pulls out his phone and his finger hovers over Al's name, where it sits at the top of his fairly short list of contacts. He doubts calling his brother will get him anywhere but it's worth a shot he supposes...nope, straight to voicemail. Al's phone is either off or he's ignoring calls; either way Mattie wasn't really expecting a different result. But now this is just another dead end, and Mattie stands on the corner of Washington and Maple, clenching his phone tightly in already chilled fingers as he tries to breathe deeply and evenly without fogging up his glasses. The short-lived mists that form on his lenses irritate him, and he catches himself imagining what it would be like to snatch off the glasses and crush them in his hands or grind them beneath his boots. He shakes his head violently, trying to clear away the all too tempting fantasy. Why it's so appealing he can't quite say; it's not like destroying the only things that let him see properly would make finding Al any easier. So he takes a deep breath of the air that burns his throat and lungs like a frozen knife, and that wakes him slightly from his destructive reverie.

He returns to Al's name in his phone and begins scrolling through old texts, searching for any hints of a place his brother might have gone. As he looks, he starts walking again; it's too cold to stand still. He crosses the street, subconsciously beginning to follow the route to school, the only other place he knows Al goes, looking for—what? Clues? It's stupid, but it's all he has, so he keeps going. Right on Lincoln, right on Bernice, left on Main, slight right onto Thomas. He doesn't know how long it takes him, but finally he's standing in front of the high school.

The building looms, grey and vacant in the snow. Not a single car graces the parking lot; the thin white film on the asphalt is completely untouched. Mattie clenches his fists and feels warm tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, although that might just be from the wind chill. He doesn't know what he was hoping to find, but finding nothing here—the only place he could think to go—finally drives home the realization that Al is gone.

"Hey kid!"

Mattie whirls around at the voice that drifts, muffled, from across the street. Two boys in hoodies stand slouched against the wall of the gas station on the other side of Thomas Street. One of them sticks up a hand when he sees Mattie turn.

"Over here, kid!"

Mattie's first instinct is to run, his second to walk quickly but calmly away, but first, he peers through the greyness, trying to discern who these only-slightly-shady characters might be. He's pretty sure they're seniors at the high school: the sort who skip class, smoke during lunch and do weed behind the bleachers during sports events. In short, not the kind of people he has any reason to associate with. Al on the other hand…

Against his better judgement, he crosses the street. He hates the fact that these people are his only hope for maybe getting a hint as to Al's whereabouts, and he's pretty sure his body language shows it. He doesn't care. His entire frame is tensed to the breaking point, ready to fight or run or both if this encounter should go south, but it's better safe than sorry. And he's already sorry that he has to interact with these people.

"Hey," he says brusquely as he steps into the empty station, stopping just shy of the shelter of the convenience store overhang. "What do you want?"

The guy who waved pushes himself upright off the wall, extinguishes his cigarette against the icy bricks and drops the butt on the ground. "What do you want?"

Mattie glowers and shoves his fists deeper into his coat pockets, ignoring the burning pain when his still-bloody knuckles make contact with the seams in the fabric. "You're the one who called me over here."

The older boy laughs and puts up his hands in defense. "Chill kid, that's fair enough." Platinum blond bangs so pale they're almost grey partially veil his dark eyes, which gleam in shrewd amusement. It makes Mattie uncomfortable; he feels like this boy knows more than he does, like he's somehow at a disadvantage. He shuffles his feet and crosses his arms over his chest.

"So what do you want?"

The blond boy shrugs. "You're Alfred's kid brother, right?"

Mattie tenses even more, if that is even possible, although moreso from surprise than from fear. "You know Al?"

"Should say so," is the laughing reply. "We're pretty tight."

"Yeah?" Mattie remains wary. "He's never mentioned you."

The blond guy puts a hand to his heart in mock horror. "Never? The treachery!"

His previously silent companion snorts and stands up straight as well. "Shut up, Gil," he says, before dropping and grinding out his own cigarette with his heel and extending his hand to Mattie. "I'm Antonio. Drama queen over there is Gilbert. We _are_ friends with your brother. It's Matt, right?"

"Matthew," Mattie responds automatically, taking Antonio's hand and shaking it. "Nice to meet you."

It's Gilbert's turn to snort while Antonio smiles crookedly. "Nice to meet you too." The brunet boy's green eyes are kinder, less calculating and less mocking, but it's clear who the dominant personality is, because he fades into the background again as Gilbert begins to speak.

"So whatcha doin' here Matt?" Gilbert leans back against the wall and lights another cigarette. "There's no school on Saturdays, ya know."

Mattie bristles. He doesn't like this boy. He doesn't like him at all. "I know," he snaps back. "I was just out for a walk."

"Walking to school on a Saturday." Gilbert takes a long drag and exhales again philosophically. "A real man of learning we have here."

"You know what—"

"Okay, okay. Take it easy, Mattie."

"Don't call me that."

"Okay _Matthew_ , take it easy. Forreal, whatcha doing?"

Mattie hesitates. He glances as Antonio, who only shrugs and lights himself another cigarette, then back at Gilbert, who is still puffing away and looking at him expectantly.

"I'm looking for Al," he says finally, his heart beating irrationally loud and fast.

Gilbert stops immediately. He removes his cigarette from his mouth and turns to look at Antonio, who has also stopped smoking. The two share a long look that Mattie can't quite read, then, without a word, Gilbert takes his phone out of his pocket, presses a few buttons and then holds it to his ear, his cigarette still dangling idly between the index and middle fingers of his left hand. Mattie can hear the phone ringing, then the muffled buzz of a voice as the person on the other end picks up.

"Hey Al?" Gilbert says, and Mattie tries not to mind the hurt that wells up inside him when he realizes that his brother will pick up for this rude stranger and not for him. He shakes away that thought and focuses on listening to the half of the conversation that he can hear.

"Dude where are you? Did you finally leave home?"

_Finally?_ It hurts how accurate that word is.

"Shit dude, I'm sorry. What a dick...Wait are you at my place? Shit why didn't you text me? I know, I know it's early, but Tony needed a smoke." Antonio makes a face at this point and chucks his recently expired cigarette butt at his friend, but Gilbert ignores him. "You calling me an addict? Fuck off. Yeah, at the Shell across from school, I can be home in like ten. You have a key, though, right? Yeah, just let yourself in, I'll be home soon."

Mattie clears his throat softly, and Gilbert looks up, eyes wide, as though just remembering that he was there. "Oh yeah, Al? Your brother is here."

Mattie's breath catches and his heart skips a beat as the silence extends for a couple seconds. Then Al's voice comes again, low through the phone speaker, and Gilbert nods.

"Yeah, he's right here." He tilts the phone away from his mouth and looks at Mattie. "He wants to talk to you."

Mattie nods and holds out his hand for the phone. It feels strangely heavy, and lifting it to his ear seems to require a lot of effort. His voice comes out slightly strangled as he speaks into the receiver. "Hey Al."

"Mattie." Al's voice is gentle but stern, and Mattie wants to cry for how much he sounds like Arthur right now. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for you." His words are small and pleading and he hates them.

"Shit, Matt," Al mutters, and Mattie can almost see how he runs a hand through his hair, another mannerism picked up from Arthur. "Matt, you should go home."

The words are like a slap in the face, but Mattie manages a dry laugh. "You really think I'm gonna do that, Al? I'm not going home without you."

"Matt, you know I can't go back. You heard what Arthur said."

Mattie laughs again, but there are tears in it this time, and his voice cracks as he replies, "Arthur's full of shit."

Al snorts softly. "Yeah, he is. But I'm still not coming home, Matt. Not for a while, anyway. Gil has a place for me. I'll be okay."

"But your things—all your stuff—"

"Matt." Al's words are horribly gentle, like he's explaining something hard—but something that should have been obvious—to a little kid. "I've got things at Gilbert's. We've been ready for this for almost a year now."

Although he doesn't physically move, Mattie feels himself reeling backwards, grasping at memories as he falls. He flicks through images and conversations of the past year, trying to find signs that this had been coming all along. He can't pin down specifics, can't remember seeing Al leave with clothes or books or bedding. All he can recall is fighting this horrible dread that this or that day might be the last time Al came home. But that day never came, so he hoped…hoped against hope, as was now clear. In one sickening moment of clarity, Mattie sees the inevitable truth that he had been fighting, that he should have been prepared for. His arms fall limply to his sides, the phone only millimeters from slipping out of his grasp. He can faintly hear Al calling his name, asking him to say something, but he can't listen anymore. He looks dumbly at Gilbert as the other boy takes the phone and holds it to his ear.

"Al? You still there?"

Mattie only half listens to the rest of the brief conversation; it's mostly just Gilbert saying "okay." He doesn't look up when Gilbert finally hangs up the phone.

"Hey kid."

Mattie doesn't respond.

"Come on, we're gonna go see your brother."

This at last draws his gaze upwards. He looks at Gilbert with vague distrust, but the older boy only raises his eyebrows as if to say "you coming?" and Mattie feels he has no choice but to follow. The upside is that he gets to follow him into the dull-grey Honda Civic that sits a few yards away, blending in with dull-grey environment so well that he hadn't noticed it before. The cold, faux-leather cushions are still warmer than the outside wind chill, and he burrows as far as he can into the backseat and curls into himself as Gilbert and Antonio climb into the front, intensifying the scent of stale cigarette smoke.

They screech out of the parking lot a little too fast for the amount of fine white flakes that have accumulated on the ground, and Mattie removes his hands from his pockets to clutch at the cracked fabric of the seat beneath him.

"How far?" he asks, wanting to fill the silence.

"Seven minutes tops," Antonio replies. His eyes flick up to look at Mattie in the rearview mirror, but Gilbert interrupts before he can say anything more.

"Chill out, kid. He's not gonna go anywhere before we get there."

In fact, Alfred is standing outside when they careen into the wide, unshoveled driveway of a surprisingly upscale suburban home. Mattie expected Gilbert's house to be sketchier. But he's not here for the real estate, he's here for the boy in front of the garage, so he swings open the backseat door almost before the car is in park. He thinks maybe Gilbert tries to say something, but he ignores it and steps out of the car, planting both feet firmly on the ground and sending a a flurry of white powder swirling outwards from the point of impact.

"Hey Matt." Alfred throws his shoulders back from their hunched position and holds his arms out, clearly trying to take control of the situation, and either trying for a hug or a cautionary gesture. Mattie ignores it either way.

"What. The. Hell." He strides up the driveway, his face hard and his voice harder. "What. The. Hell." He's in Al's face now, and Al is no longer trying to hug him. " _What. The. HELL._ "

"Mattie—"

Al puts up his hands once more, this time definitely in a pacifying gesture, but Mattie goes straight through them. He grabs fistfuls of Al's shirt, gripping them until his knuckles are an ugly, oozing canvas of red and white, and shoving his brother all the way back against the garage door. He tries to speak, but his throat is closed and he's trembling, so he only clenches his fists tighter and shakes, throwing Al with greater force against the cold metal door. Again. And again. And again.

"Whoa!" Gilbert is out of the car and forcing himself between the two brothers. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" He grabs Mattie by both shoulders and gives him a little shake. "Cool it, kid. Cool it."

"Get out of my way," Mattie growls, pushing roughly at the other boy's surprisingly solid chest. "This isn't about you."

"You're right," Gilbert replies, even-toned and more serious than Mattie supposed him to be capable of. "But it's my house, my rules, and I say we go inside and talk this out like civilized people. Quietly. 'Cause my brother's still sleeping. So no fist fights." He releases Mattie and pats the wrinkled fabric of his coat smooth, his own studied languidness returning. "Got it?"

Mattie shoves him away. "Fine." Al looks visibly relieved, a fact that is not lost on him, and he stares at his brother until Al drops his gaze. "No _fistfights_."

"Wonderful." Gilbert claps his hands together like they're all about to have a fun game of Twister. "Let's go inside. Tony, you wanna grab the whiskey from the garage?"

"It's not even noon, Gil—"

"We're gonna put it in coffee, not drink it straight! God, Tony, what do you think I am, an alcoholic?"

Antonio mutters something that sounds a lot like, "Yeah, actually," but Gilbert ignores him and ushers them all inside.

"Go ahead into the den," he tells Al. "Tony and I'll make the coffee. Don't worry," he winks at Mattie, "I'll make one virgin."

Mattie scowls but doesn't object, and follows Alfred through the still shockingly HGTV model house to a room that's quite honestly everything a den should be: dark, with warm, incandescent lightbulbs and lots of fat leather armchairs, complete with massive sectional sofa and flat-screen tv the size of Mattie and Al's bedroom floor. Mattie's jaw drops a little bit.

"So this is why you wanna leave," he blurts out. He doesn't know if it's resentment or a lame attempt at humor, but either way it seems to relax Alfred a little bit, because when he finally turns around there's a wry half-smile on his face.

"Yup," he replies. "Gonna live the American dream. Arms chairs and suburbia."

"And Irish coffee."

Al actually laughs this time. "Don't let Gil hear you call it Irish." He puts on a fake stoner voice and frames his words in exaggerated air quotes. "'Irish coffee is full of cream and fru-fru sugary shit. This stuff is Good Prussian Coffee.'"

"Pretty sure that's not a thing…"

Al shakes his head. "Give it up, dude. He says it's a family recipe."

Mattie raises an eyebrow but says nothing, and they lapse into an uncomfortable silence. Al tries to sit down, but he stands quickly up again when the leather squeaks loudly every time he shifts his weight. Mattie misjudges the distance between his back and the wall and stumbles trying to lean casually next to the light switch. He's just starting to remember how angry he is when Gilbert sticks his head into the room.

"How's it going kids? Any bloody noses, broken bones? No? Good! Time for coffee!"

The rest of his body emerges, followed by Antonio. Each boy is holding two mugs. Three of the four are plain blue. The fourth one is white with a cartoon dinosaur. Mattie glowers as Gilbert hands him the dinosaur mug. Gilbert shrugs.

"I had to be able to tell the difference."

Mattie takes a sip of his coffee and pulls a face. "There's definitely whiskey in this."

"Whoops, sorry!" Gilbert shrugs blithely and sips from his own mug.

"God, Gil," Alfred explodes, snatching the cup from Mattie's hands and slamming it down with unnecessary force on a mahogany end table. "Mattie doesn't need that shit, what the fuck is your problem?"

"What?" Gilbert drawls. "It's good for him. 'll put hair on his chest. And that's gonna leave a mark if you don't wipe it up." He gestures at the coffee droplets on the table.

"I'm gonna give you a mark you _can't_ wipe up in a minute—"

"Shut up!"

Three pairs of eyes turn to fix themselves on Mattie. He freezes for a moment, then continues.

"I came here to talk to my brother, so everybody else can get the hell out. Also," he can't resist as Gilbert is almost out the door, "Prussian coffee isn't a thing, _Gil_."

The door slams on Antonio guffawing at Gilbert's indignant sputters. Mattie turns sheepishly to look at Al, who is biting back a smile.

"I couldn't resist."

Al nods. "Understandable. Gilbert can be a bit of an ass."

The words are out before Mattie has time to think: "So why are you going to live with him?"

The smile disappears completely from Alfred's face and he falls back onto an armchair. He stares into his coffee mug for a long time before looking up at his brother. "Honestly?"

He doesn't want to hear the answer. He doesn't need it. He knows. "Yeah."

Al sighs. He nods heavily a couple times, as though psyching himself up, then looks Mattie in the eye. "Because Arthur is more of an ass. And more of an ass than I can stand to live with."

"He's trying his best." The minute the words are out of his mouth, Mattie knows they're the wrong ones, but it's too late to take them back. Alfred laughs harshly.

"His best? His _best_? God, Matt, if that was his best, I'd hate to see his worst—"

"Al, you know I didn't mean it like—"

"—oh, that's right! I _have_ seen his worst. And it sucks. Any other brilliant observations, Mr Holmes? Any other lame-ass justifications you'd like to throw at me?"

"Al—"

"He hates me, Matt. He hates me. When are you going to get that through your head? When are you going to wake up and realize that you were the only one of us he ever loved?"

"That's not true and you know it—"

"Do I? Because I look at Arthur and all I see is a sad, self-righteous man who thought he was doing something _good_. And he was too proud to admit that we were never going to make it work. He got it in his head that he was going to help the poor troubled foster kid, and he couldn't let it go. He was so sure he could fix me, make me what he wanted me to be. Well he _couldn't_. He broke both of us. And he broke you. And I am never—never going to forgive him for that."

"Al—" Mattie says again, but this time his voice is sad and tearstained and full of too much understanding. Al's shoulders are hitching silently up and down and Mattie's heart is breaking and everything in the world is disappearing except them and their sadness. He falls on his knees in front of his brother, gently pries the mug from his shaking hands. "Al…"

And Alfred pulls his brother to him, clutching him in a tight hug that feels like regret and something horribly close to goodbye.

"I'm sorry," he whispers into Mattie's shoulder. "I'm so sorry."

The words wash over Mattie like icy water, and he feels himself reeling backwards. He hears Al ask him what's wrong, but those words are lost in the black pit that is fast devouring everything inside him.

_I am so sorry Mathieu. So sorry, mon cher._

_For what, Papa? Why are you crying?_

Francis had said nothing, only hugged him tightly for a long time. The next morning, social services came. It was an age ago now, a memory long buried, like a bad dream. Yet it's here once more, the nightmare come back to life in the form of the one person Mattie thought would never betray him. And suddenly Mattie feels his anger rising like gorge in his throat.

"You promised."

The words come out quietly, between clenched teeth, almost of their own accord. He can feel his fingernails digging, claw-like, into Alfred's arms, but his brother doesn't flinch, only drops his head closer to Mattie's.

"What?" he asks softly.

Mattie's grip grows impossibly tight for only a moment, then he shoves Al away, looking up to meet his gaze with eyes hard and bright with tears.

"You promised!" Mattie screams, standing over him, the tears already falling. "You promised you wouldn't leave! You told me you would stay, that we needed to stick together! You promised, Al, you promised! Do you remember who else promised me that? Do you remember? Does that—god—does that mean anything to you?"

Al's face darkens and his nostrils flare. "It means everything to me," he shouts back, standing. "The only reason I stayed this long was for you! Because I promised! I promised, Mattie! Don't you realize I'm gonna lie awake every fucking night wishing I could have found a way to stay?"

Mattie blinks, uncomprehending. Can this be Al's only defense? To lay the responsibility on Mattie; to make out that Al himself is the only victim here? The tears seem to freeze on his face, and dry where they stand. His voice grows flat, the model of confusion, yet edged with the suggestion that the answer should be obvious.

"So stay."

Alfred bites his lip. His head drops, and for a second, Mattie's heart leaps. For a second, he thinks maybe Al has seen sense, that he is coming home. He's always come home. He's always brought Mattie home. He's the only reason Mattie has stayed this long. He might even be the only reason Mattie's still alive. Mattie doesn't know. All he knows is that in the same moment his heart leapt, he knew with a crushing certainty what Al's answer would be. Al looks up, his eyes pleading for forgiveness.

"I can't."

Mattie doesn't know what he expected—either from Alfred or from himself. There's nothing left for either of them to say or do now. All he knows is that he will not be dragged away or left behind again. If he must be alone, he will walk out himself, on his own two legs, so he turns and leaves the den, past Gilbert and Antonio's stunned faces, away from Al's desperate plea: "At least let Gil drive you home!" He opens the door to a gray world that seems eerily familiar, save for the snow that falls instead of rain. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets and he does not look back. He doesn't see Al standing in the doorway, blue eyes swimming with tears, dirty blond hair dampened with melting snow, right hand half-raised in a gesture equal parts plea and farewell. He sees only the empty street before him as he sets his face and walks away.

. . .

Arthur is waiting in the sitting room when he finally hears Mattie's frozen fingers fumbling with the doorknob. He shoots out of his armchair amidst the creak of old furniture and older floorboards, rushing into the front hall where Mattie is stamping his feet and blowing into his cupped hands. He looks at him.

"Alfred?"

His face is pale and drawn; Mattie never knew the meaning of the phrase "sick with worry" until he saw the greenish tint of Arthur's cheeks. He can't bear to answer the question; Arthur is staring almost hungrily at the door, like he might die if it doesn't open once more to reveal his wayward child. His gaze returns, feverish and hopelessly hopeful, to Mattie, who manages only one slight shake of the head—who never would have done it had he known what would follow.

Arthur staggers backward as though physically struck, and Mattie can see the breath leave his body as he collapses against the wall. He slides inch by inch toward the floor, and by the time he reaches it, a low, keening sound has filled the narrow hallway. Arthur is crying—the unselfconscious sobs of a broken man.

And Mattie should feel compassion, should pity the man before him. But instead, a disgust so vile it chokes him begins to gather in the center of his chest.

_This is your fault._

If he were Alfred, he would say it out loud. He would scream it at Arthur, tell him he had no right to sit there crying like he was the victim. Mattie. Mattie was the only victim of this whole fucked-up situation—the collateral damage of a ten-year war. If he were Alfred, he would say all that and more, but instead he clenches his fists, digging his fingernails into his palms, and strides past Arthur to the stairs.

He manages to keep it together all the way up, right until the moment he shuts his bedroom door and leans heavily with his eyes closed against the wood that seems to groan with more than just his physical weight. Then he opens his eyes and sees the room just as he left it, as if everything that the room stood for hadn't been violently ripped apart in the past four hours. He walks as if in a trance to Al's desk, where a piece of notebook paper sits, perfectly clean except for "Alfred Jones: Problem Set #35" scrawled messily at the top. He hates it. His hands tremble inside his pockets until, in one spastic motion, they seize the paper and tear it to shreds. It feels awful, in exactly the way he needs right now, and he yanks open the top drawer, looking for the something else to destroy. He finds a box of unsharpened yellow pencils and snaps every single one in half, throwing the pieces across the room. More unused notebook paper joins the pile of crumpled scraps at Mattie's feet. Thumbtacks, staples and paperclips clatter to the floor like so much barbed confetti. He rips an entire book in half—you don't grow up with Al without growing up strong—sending the halves spinning in opposite directions, one against the wall, the other directly into Al's desk lamp, which crashes to the floor in a shower of glass shards. He tears open the second drawer, not even paying attention to the things he pulls out and hurls away from him.

Finally, the drawers are empty. Mattie stands, chest heaving, in the midst of the carnage, surveying his handiwork, and something catches his eye. A few feet away, half-hidden under the bed, sits an index card boldly marked up in bright blue Sharpie. Mattie thinks he feels his heart stop, and then start beating again impossibly fast. He takes a two steps forward and squats to pick up the card. There are two things written on it.

A phone number.

And the name _Francis Bonnefoy._

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

No matter how many mornings come and go, Mattie will never get used to the way Al's mattress lies evenly above his own. He will never stop expecting to see the worn fabric sagging through the bed slats, indicating that Al is still curled up under the blankets, resisting the call of the alarm. In recent days, he's taken to sleeping on his stomach, just so that sign of the empty bed won't be the first thing he sees when he wakes up.

Last night, however, he fell asleep on his back, and now he lies motionless on the bed, staring vacantly at the wooden slats above him, wondering if he keeps still enough, he will disappear entirely. Even this early in the morning, the summer heat is beginning to seep through the cracks around the windows and doors, and Mattie can feel his blankets growing heavier on top of him. Sweat begins to prickle all over his body, but he remains totally still, somehow hoping that the weight will cause him to sink all the way into the mattress, to drift off through a suffocating haze to the warm darkness he can't seem to reach even in sleep.

Then he hears a clattering downstairs and the spell is broken. Suddenly, the covers are unbearably hot, and he pushes them off him and lies still a few moments longer, letting the cooler, fresher air from outside the blanket waft over him, turning the pinpricks of sweat into goosebumps. He shivers lightly and sits up with a groan, his pajama shirt clinging to his back and his shaggy hair flopping against his neck. He hasn't had a haircut or new clothes in almost a year now, so his hair is too long and his shirt is too short, the combined effect resembling something like a blond teenage tree as his feet touch the ground and he stretches his arms out, yawning. The noise downstairs continues, and he sighs. Arthur exists in only two modes these days: sleep, or constant aimless activity. The rattle of dishes downstairs suggests the latter, and after all, Mattie reflects, it's not that surprising.

Today is Al's eighteenth birthday.

They've been avoiding looking at the calendar on the wall ever since they flipped the page to July—or rather, since Mattie did; Arthur didn't leave his room on Mattie's birthday. It was probably for the best. Mattie hadn't felt like dealing with compulsory pancakes and a charade of normalcy. He had only hoped that perhaps Arthur would do the same today, and not subject both of them to a mutual experience of Alfred's absence. Everything is easier when Arthur grieves in silence; Mattie prefers not to grieve at all. The crueler parts of him whisper in his ear that Arthur has no right to grieve, no right to be sad, when he himself had driven Al away. He silences that part of himself by cutting it off completely. Arthur's fitful moods and the agonizing flatness of Al's mattress are the only things that coax it out of hiding.

He tries to keep quiet as he walks through the hallway and down the stairs, but more than ten years of two boys running, jumping and sliding all over the house have done nothing to improve its creakiness. Fortunately, the bangs and thumps from the kitchen continue, masking his ginger footsteps. Once he reaches the hallway, he peers around the doorframe into the kitchen, where a large box sits on the counter and Arthur is rummaging through cupboards. The handle of a baseball bat sticks out over the top of the box, and Mattie wonders briefly what it's doing in the kitchen. Then Arthur turns, and Mattie understands.

Arthur's arms are full of Alfred's stuff: elementary school drawings that used to hang on the fridge, the matching bowl and mug that Al had made in seventh grade shop class, an old calendar featuring pictures of the United States' Men's National Soccer Team's starting eleven. Arthur had tried to convince him to get one with David Beckham. Mattie watches as Arthur dumps it all in the box with the baseball bat and then returns to the cupboard. Another shop class mug joins its fellows, and then Mattie catches his breath. Arthur is holding a white teapot. From where Mattie stands, there is nothing remarkable about it; it's a teapot much like any other teapot. But Mattie also knows that on the side facing Arthur are two names, scrawled in faded orange marker. He and Al had bought the teapot at a yard sale when Mattie was nine, intending to give it to Arthur as a Christmas present, and added the marker signatures by way of a personal touch. For nearly eight years, Arthur had hand-washed that teapot, taking special care not to spoil the Sharpie that was never meant for decorating glazed ceramic. Now it hovers inches above the top of the box. Arthur sets it down.

"What the heck?!" Mattie emerges from his spot behind the doorframe, gesturing frantically at the box. "What are you doing?"

Arthur looks up like a deer in headlights. His hands twitch nervously over the box where he just set the pot like he's preparing to snatch it back up in defense. He clearly was not planning on witnesses, and somehow that makes it worse. Mattie thinks of his name sitting abandoned in a box on the side of the road, with nobody but Arthur knowing its fate, and his blood boils. It isn't just Al that Arthur is throwing away.

"You can't get rid of that," says Mattie decisively, striding across the room and plucking the teapot from its perch inside the box. Arthur had balanced it precariously on top of two mugs, and Mattie is rendered momentarily speechless by Arthur's utter lack of regard for a once precious gift.

"I haven't used it in years," Arthur objects weakly, but Mattie dismisses him.

"That's no excuse," he snaps. "I gave that to you too; you can't just get rid of it!"

Arthur remains silent.

"If you don't want to see it," Mattie continues, "I'll take it up to my room. But you can't get rid of it."

Arthur grunts, a facade of disinterest. "Fine. Do you want any of the other stuff?" He gestures at the box.

Mattie looks down and picks up a couple of the crayon drawings. One of them is a drawing of a baseball player that Mattie had drawn for Alfred in third grade. 'Love, Mattie,' is printed painstakingly in the corner. He sets the picture down like it burned him.

"No."

"Fine," Arthur repeats, and he closes the flaps of the box. "If there's anything you feel like throwing out, this'll be in the front hall."

Mattie doesn't feel like throwing anything out; he feels more like throwing up. Is all this–all twelve years of memories–worth no more than any ordinary garbage? Does this make Arthur feel better? Does it soothe the gaping wound that Alfred left? It seems to Mattie that his guardian is only picking at a scab starting to fester, making the wound bigger and uglier, but he doesn't bother to say anything. He and Arthur may still live in the same house, but they don't live together. They haven't had a substantial conversation in weeks–perhaps months–and Mattie doesn't particularly want to start now. He just clutches the teapot to his chest and mounts the stairs once more, leaving Arthur–to do what he neither knows nor cares.

Once back inside his room, Mattie sets the teapot carefully down on his desk and then flops down in the chair, slouching horribly and contemplating the piece of ceramic with a vague, morose kind of hatred. He's not sure why he saved it, now. The crooked orange letters seem to be mocking him.

Arthur doesn't care, they whisper to him. He doesn't care about Alfred, and he doesn't care about you either.

He shuts his eyes as tightly as he can and clenches his fists, trying to crush the sudden image he has of seizing the little white pot and dashing it to a million pieces on the bedroom floor. Instead, he picks it up, his hands trembling with the struggle for restraint, and sets it down again on his bed, throwing the blankets over it. Yet even out of sight, its taunts continue.

Arthur doesn't care. Doesn't care. Doesn't care. Doesn't care.

Mattie grits his teeth and bears down hard on his temples, squeezing them between the heels of his hands. It doesn't work, and suddenly, he lets go. Unable to defeat the thought, he lets it wash over him. It amazes him how coldly he can analyze it when he stops fighting.

Arthur. Arthur who took him in, who allowed him to feel like he had a home again when he thought that would never happen. Arthur who kept him clothed and fed and supplied with books and toys and almost anything a growing boy could possibly want. Arthur who loved him.

Who had loved him.

Doesn't care. Just like that, the negation of all the things he had ever associated with Arthur. Because Arthur had driven away his brother, and with him, his home. He hadn't bought new clothes for Mattie in almost a year, maybe longer. He only went grocery shopping when he was out of sleeping pills. He had not even left his room on Mattie's birthday.

He had tried to throw away the teapot.

It's strange how freeing these thoughts are. The tears that threatened moments ago evaporate from Mattie's eyes, and his stare turns vacant. Even the pain from squeezing his head so hard seems to have faded into the oblivion of acceptance. Arthur doesn't care. Mattie doesn't either, and suddenly he feels like a new person. Seized with a sudden morbid curiosity, he stands and strides across the hall to the bathroom, intending to look his reflection in the eye and see if this sudden coldness is truly as transformative as it feels. Instead, he takes one look in the mirror and goes reeling backwards. For one wild minute, he thinks he sees Francis looking back at him.

In another minute of course, he sees all the differences. His honey-colored hair, though perhaps as long as Francis' used to be, is much darker, and his eyes are not the same clear, sparkling blue. In fact, upon examination, his face looks almost nothing like Francis', and he wonders what similarities he saw only seconds ago. Or perhaps, he thinks in the same cold, analytical manner, he only wants to see Francis. He doesn't know why. It's not like Francis cared either. Arthur is just another Francis. Everybody in his life, it seems to him, is just another Francis.

The more he tells himself that, however, the more uncertain of it he becomes. His memories of Francis are, after all, very old and not very clear. All he can remember distinctly is the most powerful sensation of being loved, a feeling he hasn't felt—god! he hasn't felt in years. And suddenly he's sure. Francis did care. Francis was the only one who ever cared.

He needs to get back to Francis.

He forces himself to take measured steps back to his bedroom, and he stands in front of his desk, staring at the top drawer. He only looked at it, only contemplated opening it, when he felt the need to torture himself, but now, looking at it, he feels only this manic, all-consuming hope. His right hand shakes as he reaches for the handle, but grows steady as he seizes it and pulls the drawer open. On top of old binders and notebooks and a thousand other pieces of junk he hasn't bothered to throw away sits the notecard, untouched from the moment he decided he couldn't bear to look at it anymore. Francis' name. And a phone number.

His cell phone is charging on top of the dresser. He snatches it up, almost taking the whole power cord with him, then returns to his desk, where the notecard is still sitting on top of a stack of biology quizzes. The bright blue numbers assault his eyes, almost seem to dance in front of him, and after punching them into his phone, he checks them ten times to be sure. Finally, all there is left to do is press 'call.' His finger seems to move in slow motion, taking an age to reach the little green button on the screen. Then there's ringing in his ears, and the crackling sound of a phone on the other end picking up.

"Francis Bonnefoy speaking."

Mattie's hand is shaking so badly he thinks he might drop the phone.

"Francis," he croaks—the only reply he can manage.

"Yes? Who is this?" The voice on the other end is brusque, but unmistakably his.

"Francis," he repeats. "Francis, it's Matthew."

"Matthew who?" the man asks, not unkindly, but the question cuts Mattie to the core, and he bites back a sob.

"Matthew _Williams_ ," he answers plaintively, his voice breaking.

A long silence, then:

" _Mon Dieu_ ," Francis whispers, and the line goes dead.

The phone falls from Mattie's fingers and he doesn't even notice. His whole body is numb and shaking, except for the ear that was, moments ago, so close to Francis' voice. That ear is burning with a heat so intense Mattie wonders briefly if his entire head will just evaporate, disappear in a cloud of smoke. Then something tickles his foot, dragging him back to reality, and he looks down to where his phone lies ringing, half-propped up on his instep. The number he just dialed glows aggressively up at him, and he fights the momentary urge to bring his heel down hard on the screen. He contemplates letting it ring through to voicemail, seeing if Francis will leave a message, begging him to pick up. But for once, the angels shout down the demons in his brain, and he stoops to retrieve the vibrating cell phone. It weighs heavily in his hand, the low buzz seeming to shoot up his arm and straight to the ever-tightening knot in his stomach. Just as the last ring begins to die away, he presses "Answer."

"Hello?"

"Mathieu."

"Francis." His voice breaks halfway through the first syllable, and he has to roughly swallow the lump in his throat that threatens at any moment to burst forth in a sob he's been holding back for years.

"How—how did you get this number?" The voice on the other end is inscrutable—full of emotion, but Mattie can't tell whether it's good or bad, joy or shock or even anger.

"I found it." God, he hates how pathetic he sounds, like a child pleading forgiveness for a crime he doesn't quite understand committing.

" _Mon Dieu_." That can't be good. "Have you been looking? All this time?"

Mattie doesn't quite know what to say to that. Because he hasn't been looking, not in years. He hasn't stared for long moments after every head of yellow hair that passes by, hasn't casually scanned the white pages for a name he doesn't really expect to see anymore. But in this moment, he's not sure. Not of his own actions, but of the response Francis wants to hear. The manner of his asking indicates that he hopes Mattie has not been looking. But perhaps, underneath, he wants desperately to hear that the boy he once called his son never stopped looking for him, never gave up hope that one day they would find each other. And suddenly guilt strikes Mattie directly in the stomach like a tidal wave that threatens to sweep him entirely out of the realm of rationality. Panic rushes up his throat from the turmoil in his gut and the ground seems to fall away beneath him. He should have been looking. Why wasn't he looking? How long had it been? Why did he stop?

Would Francis forgive him?

"No," he murmurs, one scalding tear running down his cheek, leaving a trail of icy shame behind it. "No, I found it by accident."

The words leave his mouth to the tune of what sounds like a sigh on relief on the other end of the line. But even as he speaks them, Mattie finds himself wondering if they are entirely true. Finding Francis' number in a pile of Al's papers was hardly a coincidence. Even though Mattie had not gone looking for it, the fact the Al had it was no accident. And maybe he had meant for Mattie to find it.

"A happy accident then," Francis is saying, but his voice, once painfully close, now seems to come from far away. It is too far, too cheerful. Mattie needs to think. He needs to understand. And for that, he needs distance.

"Francis?"

" _Oui_?"

"I have to go. I'm sorry."

He doesn't wait for a response. He hangs up, and drops the phone onto his desk like a weight he can no longer support. His arm is shaking-no-his whole body. Francis. After all these years. Francis. But how? After all these years, how did he manage to reappear in Mattie's life?

Mattie knows there is only one person who can answer that question. His phone is in his hand again, and his thumb hovers over the number he's almost called a thousand times, but never once followed through on since the day he walked out into the snow, praying his brother wasn't gone forever. It seems so long ago now, and not just because the oppressive summer heat has banished all but the faintest dreams of snow and frozen fingertips. Life has gone on without Al. Months have passed. It seems like a long time because it has been a long time. That's why he can't think. He just presses the button and holds the phone to his ear, waiting. It clicks on the first ring.

"Mattie?!"

He almost cries, and not just because he thinks he can hear tears in his brother's voice too.

"Hi Al," he manages to squeeze past the lump in his throat.

"Oh my god." Al sounds almost frantic with joy. "I didn't think—I mean I didn't expect—God, Mattie, I hoped you might call."

It hits Mattie like a ton of bricks and just like that he's cursing himself for picking up his phone. Al thinks he's calling for his birthday. Now what does he say? Oh yeah, happy birthday dude. Listen, why did you have my ex-foster father's number in your desk? Not so much. He smiles weakly, even though Al can't see his face.

"Of course I called," he manages, trying to put on an encouraging tone. "Ha—Happy birthday, Al."

He can hear Al swallow with difficulty on the other end of the line. "Thanks, Matt."

"Of course," Mattie repeats, still hoping the false note of cheer in his tone will disguise the wild tailspin in his mind. "Al?"

"Yeah?"

"Is—is there—I mean—Is there anything—that is—When you left—when I left Gilbert's house—you know—was there anything you—you had wanted to tell me?"

It has never been so hard to get one sentence out, and the silence in its wake is not encouraging. Mattie blunders on, trying to rescue himself.

"It's just that—" he grasps at straws, trying to justify the question, trying to think of some reason for it to come up. "Well it's just that when I left—that is I had wanted to say—" What? What had he wanted to say? Nothing. Fuck, he was never any good at lying. "I just wish I had had time to tell you that—that—"

"Yeah." Al cuts him off. "Yeah, Mattie. Me too."

"Oh," Mattie says weakly. "Oh good."

"Yeah…God, Mattie, I'm just so glad you called. How are...things?"

How are things? They're terrible. Arthur has all but disappeared from existence and Mattie is floating alone in a world totally devoid of anything that ever mattered to him.

Except, suddenly, Francis.

"Al, why did you have Francis' number?"

It comes out suddenly, the only way it was ever going to come out, and Mattie can almost hear the way Al purses his lips in unwelcome surprise.

"You found it then," is all he says.

No shit, Mattie thinks, but remains silent.

"You went through my stuff."

It's just a statement, not a condemnation, but Mattie bristles anyway.

"You were gone."

"Fair enough."

He wonders if Al shrugs the way he does on the rare occasion he concedes a point, and tries not to imagine the casual hitch of his shoulders, the practiced indifference on his face.

"Answer the question," he demands, more sharply than he meant to.

"Mattie…"

"What."

"You're not going to like the answer."

It isn't what Mattie was expecting, but in retrospect, he's not surprised, and his stomach begins a horrible slide to wherever it goes when it begins to sink like that. His toes? It feels more like an infernal pit that always seems to be directly below his feet.

"Well now I have to know."

In any other context, at any other time, it would be funny, it would be a joke, a gentle ribbing. But there's something deadly earnest in his voice that commands an answer, and for only a moment, Mattie allows himself to revel in the feeling of power.

"You won't like it," Al repeats softly.

"I don't care," Mattie replies, and he's surprised to find that, at least in that moment, he means it.

"Matt." Al pauses, takes a deep breath that rushes in Mattie's ear. "Matt…he was my trump card."

Mattie blinks. "What does that mean?"

"He was the one thing I had on Arthur." Al says it bluntly and without emotion, like only someone trying to hide a great deal of pain can.

"I still don't—"

"God, Matt, are you really gonna make me say it? I was keeping it in case I ever had to stop Arthur from calling CPS, okay?"

Silence, then, "How?"

"He was so scared of losing you." Al's voice grows soft, and he at least has the decency to sound ashamed. "I knew, if he thought he might…"

"Did you ever use it?" Mattie cuts him off abruptly and without mercy.

"What?"

"Did you ever use it? Did you ever tell Arthur?"

Al is silent for a moment.

"No," he says finally. "I never had to."

Mattie struggles to let his breath out evenly, so Al doesn't hear. He's not even sure if he's relieved or not, not sure why he was holding his breath in the first place, but it feels like an important moment, and something in him loosens a little bit. He can't imagine if Arthur had ever found out...

"How long did you have it?"

"A couple months before I left. Gil helped me track him down."

Mattie nods and switches the phone to his other ear, mostly for the sake of having something to do. "How'd you do it?"

Al laughs, and it's funny how good it is to hear that, even though it's nervous and barely even there. "Honestly? Gil did most of the heavy lifting on that one. I said 'hey can you find this guy?' and didn't ask him how he did it. Apparently he was hard to track down. He…well. Anyway."

"He what? No way, dude, you don't get to leave a sentence like that. What happened to Francis?"

"Mattie…"

"No. After all this time, after everything you've—You don't get to act like you're trying to protect me."

He can hear Al laugh humorlessly on the other end of the line.

"Jesus, Matt. You got removed from his custody because he was severely depressed and negligent. What do you think happened?"

Mattie bites down hard on his lip, and he almost thinks he can taste blood, but the pain gives him a feeling of control. His chest heaves once before he manages to calm his breathing, and he grips the phone so tightly that he actually thinks he might break it. He doesn't care. It might be satisfying. To hear pieces of the phone go rattling over the floor, to feel the shards in his hand and against his face…

"Well you don't have to be a dick about it," he forces out in a poor imitation of a lighthearted jab.

Al rises to the bait. "Neither do you."

"I think I have the right to know—"

"And I think I have the right not to tell you."

"Excuse me?!"

"Mattie, nothing about this conversation has convinced me that it's a good idea for me to tell you—"

"Tell me what? The truth?"

"You know what? Yeah," Al snaps. "You call me, after months of absolute silence, on my birthday-which, by the way, I'm not sure you actually remembered—and the only thing you want to know is how to find your ex-foster father you haven't seen since you were five. Now I'm all for honesty—"

Mattie scoffs loudly. Al ignores him.

"—but right now I don't think you're emotionally stable enough to deal with this. Francis has always be a sore spot for you and I don't want this on my head."

"It was on your head from the moment you wrote down his number and left it in our room," Mattie spits.

Heavy breathing on the other end of the phone, and Mattie can almost see the way Al's face tenses when he's trying to get control of himself.

"You're right." Al's voice grows softer. "You're right. But Mattie...what's the use?"

Mattie is seething.

"What's the use? How about a shred of happiness in my miserable life? How about getting just one thing back? Just one thing, out of all the things I've lost, Al. How about that?"

"I don't think—"

"I don't care what you think, Alfred. You probably think everything's just fine here. That me and Arthur are a perfect little family without you. You don't know a goddamn thing, Al."

Mattie's voice is thick, and his words come out strangled around a lump that seems to be growing out of his stomach and all the way up his throat. But Al, as usual, misses the point.

"What did Arthur do?" he asks sharply, with that touch of righteous anger that always infuriated their foster father. "Are you okay?"

Mattie laughs; he laughs so hard that it frightens him how genuinely amused he sounds. He tries to imagine Arthur striking him, cursing at him, or any of the things Al might be thinking, and he can only laugh harder, until he feels like he can hardly breathe.

"Okay?" he asks, wiping away the tears that have gathered in the corners of his eyes. "Oh yeah. Yeah." They're falling now, faster than he can wipe them away. "Yeah." His voice is going to break, he can feel it. "I'm fine."

He can't do it. He chokes on the final word, and it collapses, not into sobs—although the tears are raining down his cheeks faster than ever—but back into hysterical laughter that racks his entire body until he's gasping for breath, each inhale pitched higher and higher as he struggles to get enough air. Panic starts to build up from the pit of his stomach, filling his lungs and stopping his throat. He grips the phone tightly as his head begins to spin, trying to find something to hold onto as Al's frantic voice drifts farther away and his breaths grow shallower, stopping higher and higher up in his constricted throat.

The next thing he knows, he's on his back on the bedroom floor, drawing in the deepest breath he's ever taken in his life. It hurts the way cold water on a burn does, soothing and throbbing at the same time. His chest heaves, and he struggles to exhale evenly, afraid to lose control again. The ceiling is spinning so he closes his eyes and focuses on breathing. As the pounding in his ears subsides, he realizes Al is still talking. Yelling, really. He can hear his brother's voice clearly even though the phone is lying three feet away from his head. He can hear something else. Footsteps. Fast. Loud.

His name.

"Matthew!"

The bedroom door bursts open and Arthur, who hasn't opened the door without knocking in months, is on his knees on the floor beside Mattie. He places one hand on Mattie's arm, gripping it firmly above the elbow, the other between Mattie's shoulder blades, and helps him sit up. He rubs small circles on the boy's trembling back, trying to get him to relax without letting him slump forward to obstruct his breathing. Mattie's shaggy bangs flutter in front of his nose as he regains control, and Arthur brushes them back from his forehead, holding them in place. They're so long now they practically reach the back of his head.

"Are you all right, Matthew? What happened?" And then, before Mattie has a chance to respond: "Is that Alfred?"

With the blood pounding in his ears once more from sitting up, Mattie stopped noticing Al's crackling voice through the phone, but now he can hear it again, intermittently begging him to respond. He looks up at his guardian's face, which is wrinkled with confusion and a premonition of pain. Then Arthur's eyes light on the phone just a few feet away, and Mattie watches that shadow twist and solidify into a look of yearning that Mattie hasn't seen since the day Al didn't come home. Arthur stands, and Mattie's bangs flop back into his eyes without the pressure of a hand to hold them back; he can only half see as Arthur walks around him and stoops to pick up the phone off the ground.

"Alfred? Alfred, what happened?"

Mattie squeezes his eyes shut and prays that, just once, Al won't take that question as a personal attack. He can't hear his brother's response, but if he wasn't offended by the first question, Arthur manages to ruin it with the second one.

"Well what did you say to him?"

Several solutions occur to Mattie at the same time. He could ask Arthur to give him the phone, or simply take the phone from him by force. He could leave. He could pretend not to be able to breathe again; honestly he's still kind of afraid he won't have to pretend. As he indistinctly hears Al begin to raise his voice, however, he finds he is too tired to do any of those things, so he only runs a hand through his hair and falls backwards once more onto the floor, keeping his eyes tightly shut as if that will shut out the sounds of anger that are the only thing he doesn't miss about Al's presence in their lives.

He is surprised, then, to hear Arthur's next words.

"I don't think it's your fault," he says wearily. "I'm just trying to figure out what happened. Can you please just help me here?"

Mattie's face relaxes, but he keeps his eyes closed. Al doesn't know what happened. Mattie is the only person who can explain why he just fell apart, but he doesn't want to. That would mean telling Arthur about Francis, and that information is too precious to share.

"Well he's fine now." Arthur's voice is growing short; Al must not be responding to his efforts toward deescalation.

"No, I think he needs to rest."

Did Al ask to speak to him? Mattie's wishes he had the energy to say yes, he wants to talk to Al, but he can't. Maybe Arthur was right.

"Alfred—" Arthur's hand, and Mattie's phone, drop to his side, and Mattie knows that Al hung up without letting Arthur finish.

Arthur kneels down by Mattie's side, holding the phone on his knee. He brushes Mattie's bangs away from his face once more.

"I guess it's been a while since we cut your hair, huh?"

Mattie throws his right arm over his face. It's not really a question, but he feels obliged to answer it and he doesn't know how, because it carries with it so many other more painful acknowledgements. Arthur's voice is softer than it's been in ages—it almost has a touch of humor to it—but that doesn't make it easier. If anything, it makes it harder, because it seems to demand a level of vulnerability that Mattie is not willing to give right now.

"Yeah," he says finally.

"Should we—Should we do something about that?"

Mattie shrugs, arm still across his face.

"Is everything okay?"

He shrugs again, realizing too late that such a noncommittal response is sure to provoke suspicion, but mercifully, Arthur ignores it.

"Alfred," he says, pausing for a moment after the name. "What did he want?"

Mattie takes his arm away from his face.

"It's his birthday," he says with what he hopes sounds like natural surprise. "I called him."

He hesitated too long before answering though, he knows, and he knows Arthur will realize he's making excuses. Once more, however, Arthur misses—or chooses to ignore—the obvious.

"Oh yes," is all he says, and faintly.

Mattie, hoping to end the encounter, decides to take a risk.

"I had a coughing fit," he says, trying to keep himself from babbling, to stick to a simple story. "I must have inhaled some dust or something."

It's a terrible lie, and Mattie is not sure whom he will respect less if it works: himself for telling it or Arthur for believing it. But Arthur only nods slowly in acceptance.

"I'll get you some water," he says, and, after setting Mattie's phone back on the floor beside him, stands and walks out of the room like a man in a trance. Mattie tells himself it's just the heat.

He lies for a moment longer, staring at the ceiling, listening to the water running in the bathroom across the hall. He hears Arthur's footfalls creaking back to his door, and expects his guardian to sit down beside him and watch him drink, but all he hears is the sound of a glass clinking on wood.

"Here you go," Arthur says in that same, vacant voice as he sets the glass down on Mattie's desk and walks out once more.

The footsteps don't return downstairs, but move once more across the hall, once more into the bathroom—Mattie can hear the water again—and then to Arthur's bedroom. The creak of hinges, the sound of the door latching, and all is silent once more.

Mattie wishes he had the energy to feel bad about the whole thing, about how Arthur is clearly hurting now, but he doesn't even have the energy for the sense of righteous indignation he sometimes feels when he sees Arthur grieving. It's all too bizarre, and hardly his fault. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel bad; the whole chain of events is so far from what he could have possibly anticipated, which is kind of refreshing. His life the past six months has been one of mind-numbing monotony, the kind that sinks into his bones and makes him feel both too heavy and too insubstantial to move. And he hasn't been able to shake the feeling that, somehow, it's his fault. He always got along with Arthur better than Al did, but he's not sure anymore that it's true what Al always said, that Mattie was Arthur's favorite.

Would Arthur miss him like this, if he were gone?

Does Francis miss him?

He tries to remember the voice on the other end of the line, but it's hard to be sure whether the note of incredulous joy he keeps replaying in his head is a real memory or just wishful thinking. He sits up slowly, pulling his knees to his chest and crossing his ankles, gangly arms and legs shielding his slight body, or perhaps keeping something close. His right arm falls to his side and his fingers brush the phone, still lying face-up where Arthur set it down. He could call Francis again. His fingers tighten around the cool plastic of the case, and a chill runs through his entire body. He could find out what Al refused to tell him, why Francis had been so hard to find. He rests his elbows on his knees, holding the phone in both hands and staring at the dark screen. He presses a button, watches the screen light up to a picture of a generic snowy mountain and the time. It's only ten o'clock.

What is Francis doing now?

Mattie stares intently at the time on his phone. A minute passes. The screen goes dark again. He stands. He doesn't know what he was waiting for. Nothing changed except the time on his phone, but suddenly he feels the need to move. He feels like his thoughts are chasing each other in increasingly narrow circles, like water flowing down a drain. Maybe if he stands and moves in a straight line, his thoughts will too.

Maybe Francis, wherever he is, is within walking distance.

As Mattie steps out of his bedroom, he glances into the open bathroom, and something on the counter catches his eye. His brain—it's not appropriate to call the aimless circular droning in his head "thoughts"—grinds suddenly to a halt as he recognizes the blue bottle sitting open next to the sink. He turns quickly down the hall and stops in front of Arthur's bedroom door. He knocks, twice softly and, after a brief pause, twice more a little bit louder. The gap under the door by Mattie's feet is both silent and dark.

"Arthur?" Mattie eases open the door, blinking and squinting in the dim light that emanates from the narrow spaces between the closed blinds of the room's one window.

Arthur is lying on his side on the bed, totally still, one arm thrown up over his face. He didn't even bother to get under the covers or take off his slippers; one still-shod foot hangs over the edge of the bed, the worn fabric shoe dangling sideways from his toes. As Mattie watches, the slipper trembles and falls to the floor, although Arthur remains motionless.

Mattie closes the door and returns to the bathroom, where he puts the cap on Arthur's sleeping pills and shoves them in the cabinet behind the mirror. The bottle is over half empty, although Mattie is sure it's only a couple weeks old, and it rattles hollowly as Mattie knocks it over in his haste to get it out of sight. He puts it upright once more, carefully this time, and slams the mirror back across the cabinet, his hands shaking. Either this is not the first time Arthur has taken his pills during the day, or he has been taking stronger doses.

Mattie pulls his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Francis' number. He presses "call" without hesitation, and the phone rings as he makes his way downstairs. The line clicks open as he's sliding on his shoes.

"Hi, Francis?" He opens the front door and steps outside. "Do you think we could meet up?"

. . .

A few miles south on Washington Street, the residential area turns into a modest but bustling downtown, and Mattie finds himself there about an hour later, staring out the window from the far side of a table for two inside a local cafe. There's a chain coffee shop a couple blocks away, but the intimacy of the softly lit cafe seems more appropriate for a momentous reunion than the frenetic fluorescence to be found down the street.

Mattie isn't sure what he was expecting when he asked Francis to meet him; this is exactly what he asked for, and yet now, as he sits and watches the pavement shimmer in the heat, he feels like he's trembling in time with the undulations of the air outside. Except he, unlike the mirage on the asphalt, is horribly real, horribly substantial, sitting here in this cafe and waiting for the man who broke his heart. A woman with wavy blonde hair walks by the window and Mattie's heart leaps almost into his mouth. He grips his knees beneath the table, the sweat from his palms settling into his jeans and warming his thighs even as the cool air in the cafe raises goosebumps on his arms. Every few seconds he tells himself he's going to look away from the window. He counts to five, he's going to look away now, but his eyes won't obey him. If he manages to force them to flicker away, they return once more to the bright and busy street like the moth to the proverbial flame.

Yet, somehow, it is in one of these brief lapses of watchfulness that Francis appears, and for a moment, Mattie violently resents being robbed of the few seconds of preparation that spotting him through the window would have afforded. The draft from the door swinging closed ruffles the corn-silk hair that has always been the first thing everyone notices about the man now standing in the cafe entrance. His shoulder-length blond hair, followed by his impeccable fashion sense. That hasn't changed either. His white button-down and blue slacks are perfectly tailored, if—and it's hard to tell with all the backlighting—a little bit worn. There's something about the less-than-crisp turn of the collar that suggests the softening of age.

Then he steps out of the shadow of the sun behind him and into the warm, incandescent overhead lighting, and Mattie realizes that no amount of mental fortification would have prepared him for his first clear glimpse of Francis' face in over ten years.

He's grown old. Hardly in any perceptible sense, but Mattie can see it in the slope of his shoulders, the dullness of his complexion. His skin is not as firm and bright as it once was, his back not as straight. And his eyes are dark. Not dull, like the bluish circles that mar the skin beneath his eyes, but deep, shadowy. The light that used to sparkle on the surface is gone, perhaps buried in the depths, perhaps smothered out of existence. Mattie stares, transfixed, waiting for those eyes to settle on him and for Francis to come over to his table. But his gaze slides past Mattie, even though there are only three people in the cafe and the other two are clearly a couple. It's just occurring to Mattie that perhaps he should stand up or wave or give some other sort of signal, when Francis' eyes return to rest on him, grow suddenly wide, and Mattie realizes that he wasn't the only one unprepared for what he would see. Francis may have grown older-Mattie glimpses a few strands of grey hair as Francis begins to step forward-but Mattie has grown up. He understands how Francis must feel, he thinks. He too still pictures himself more like the little boy of years past; it's harder to accept the face that looks out of the mirror at him now.

But then the shock on Francis' face dissolves into a smile, and the sparkle that was missing from his eyes is there, and Mattie shoves back his chair and runs, and for the first time in months he's actually running toward something. Half-blind with tears, he stumbles, but two arms are there to catch him, and he falls against Francis' chest and sobs.

It has been far too long since someone has held him. He hadn't known it until Arthur was helping him sit up in his room, but that brief contact ignited a hunger for another person's touch that he realizes hasn't been satisfied in months. Francis' arms are thin and trembling, but they wrap around his whole body; they hold him together, allowing him to fall apart. His balled-up fists open slightly and clutch at the fabric of Francis' shirt. He remembers all the times he was only tall enough to cling to his guardian's pant leg when he ran to him for comfort, and he cries harder, feeling Francis' arms tighten around him. Back then, Francis would crouch down and pick him up, cradle him against his chest, whisper soothing words into Mattie's honey-colored curls. And now, even though Mattie is almost as tall as Francis-maybe even taller-the words still come, tender and lilting and pressed into the damp hairs at his temple:

"Mathieu. Mathieu come, we are making a scene."

There is no trace of remonstrance in his voice; he is concerned for their privacy, not embarrassed by their emotion, and Mattie struggles to pull himself together. He remembers the couple sitting in the booth at the back, and laughs suddenly. How strange it must be, he thinks, to witness such a thing on an ordinary coffee date. It's strange enough for him as it is.

He lifts his head, the whole right side of his tear-dampened face growing cold as it peels away from Francis' shirt and meets the air. The sunlight is still streaming through the front window, and it makes Mattie squeeze his eyes shut against its brightness. When he opens them again, he still has to squint, but he can make out Francis motioning toward the exit, and he nods once. They step out the door into the pulsing heat and bustling traffic of midday downtown, and Francis' hand on his shoulder steers him gently to a crosswalk several feet away.

Mattie keeps his head down as they cross the street. Although he doubts any of these people hurrying to lunch will notice his red and tearstained face, he hides it out of habit. With the exception of the episode with Arthur this morning, Francis is the first person to see him cry in over six months. Francis and that couple in the corner booth, he amends wryly. He really had made a scene.

On the other side of the street, Francis stops them at a parking meter in front of a sandwich shop with a line out the door. Mattie murmurs an apology as he has to squeeze past two ladies with shopping bags and loud voices in order to reach the passenger door of the car parked there. He slides through as narrow an opening as he can, apologizing once more for good measure before closing the door and releasing a long breath. Francis comes around the other side, climbs in, and starts the car. When he finally manages to slip out into the traffic, Mattie is able to settle back and take stock of his situation.

The car is a surprisingly upscale sedan, but when Mattie curls his fingers into the sides of the seat, they slip inside a fraying hole in the seam, and the windshield in front of him is webbed with spider-silk cracks branching out from a pebble-sized dent in the glass. He wonders idly if this is all part of what Al wouldn't tell him. What clues about a man's life can be gleaned from his car?

Musing on these and other thoughts, Mattie nevertheless tries to remain present, expecting conversation to fill the minutes until they arrive wherever they are going. Francis, however, remains silent, and as Mattie steals glimpses at him from the corner of his eye, he notices Francis' knuckles, white and trembling on the steering wheel. He frowns, battling the tightness of sympathetic fear building in his chest, and tries to remember if Francis used to dislike driving. He can't recall. All he remembers is that he, at least, had liked driving with Francis. They used to go for long drives at Christmastime. Francis would bundle him up in his red sweatshirt, a puffy coat, hat, mittens, and a scarf, strap him into his booster seat, and they would drive around all the nearby neighborhoods, with the windows down for better visibility, the heat on full blast, and carols playing softly on the local radio station. Even though Francis drove slowly, practically just letting the car roll along by itself, the cold wind still made Mattie's eyes prickle with tears that turned the colored lights to hundreds of little stars.

He knew they were home when he saw the wreath on the yellow door. At least, Mattie thought he remembered it being yellow. He ransacks his brain for a memory of the door in anything but the warm, dim light of the wire-framed reindeer that flanked the front steps in December, but he couldn't come up with a single one. He must've stared at that door a thousand times, smiling at the color that he remembered made his little heart so happy. He drew a picture on his first day of kindergarten, of him and Francis in front of their house. He must've drawn the door, but the more he tries to imagine the rectangle of yellow crayon, the more uncertain he becomes. It could just as easily have been red. Or blue. No, not blue. The house was blue and he would remember if the house and the door were the same color. Or would he? He lifts his hands unconsciously to his temples, to squeeze away the confusion, but gentle fingers around his left wrist draw him out of his reverie.

"Mathieu, we're here."

And suddenly the whole thing doesn't matter, because Mattie looks up and they're not parked on a wide suburban street in front of a blue house with a maybe-yellow door. They're in a mostly empty parking lot, with a fifteen-story brownstone apartment building towering above them. He gapes slightly without meaning to, thrown entirely from expectations he didn't fully realize he had.

As Francis steps out of the car, Mattie continues sitting, staring perplexedly at the scene before him. His eyes move slowly between the unexpected building and the striking profile of Francis, who stands with his shoulders thrown back and his hands in his pockets, waiting. He turns to smile at Mattie through the windshield, and he cocks his head slightly in the direction of the front door, so Mattie shakes his head once to clear it and fumbles with his seat belt. He keeps his eyes fixed on the ground as he joins Francis on the sidewalk, partially because his eyes still burn from crying, and partially because he doesn't want Francis to see his confusion.

"I live on the seventh floor," Francis begins apologetically. "And the elevator is out of order."

Mattie closes his eyes and forces himself to smile before looking up.

"That's okay," he says, fighting the voice in his head asking whether Francis' old house had three front steps or two. "I like walking."

. . .

Mattie stumbles through the front door of Francis' apartment building. He feels dizzy and he can't see straight and he's not sure which one of those is causing the other, or how the hot tears pooling in his eyes are affecting either of them. He reaches into his jeans pocket with trembling hand to try to grab his phone, where he blindly shoved it moments before. He manages to pull it out, but drops it on the cement and almost falls over as he squats to pick it up.

"Shit," he murmurs frantically as he turns it over to find a thin jagged line sectioning off the top left corner of the screen. "Shit."

He's seriously tempted, for only a moment, to just sit down on the sidewalk, to simply stop. But then he glances up at the windows of the building behind his and quickly straightens up and starts walking again. His feet almost catch on each other repeatedly as he begins to speed up, half breaking into a lopsided jog that doesn't seem to carry him any faster. He tries to hurry, but it's hard while he's searching through his phone with blurry eyes, only looking up just in time to keep himself from colliding with telephone poles and men in suits heading toward the train station.

After mistakenly starting two calls to the allergist he interviewed for a project in tenth grade biology, Mattie finally manages to dial the number he wants.

One ring. Two. Six.

_Hi, it's Alfred Jones. Leave a message._

Mattie ends the call before voice mail can start recording and grips the phone tightly to keep himself from dashing it to the ground.

_I called the foster home about a year after you left. They said you had a new placement, and not to call back._

Mattie brushes at his eyes roughly with the back of his hand, but within moments they are swimming with tears again. A toddler clutching a stuffed animal runs into his leg, and he murmurs an apology to the harried mother who scoops up the child and begins to scold her to watch where she's going.

_They wouldn't tell me where you were. They didn't understand. They didn't understand how much I loved you, how much it tortured me every day that I gave you up. I knew I had to try to find you myself._

It hadn't made sense, Mattie knew, that the system would put him in a home so near his former foster parent. He should never have been able to meet Francis at a coffee shop an hour's walk from his house, find himself at Francis' apartment just on the other side of town. For so long, Francis' inexplicable nearness has been the stuff of his wildest and most desperate dreams, but now…

_It took me a few years but I finally found you. You were in your local newspaper—do you remember? Third place in the summer reading program, and I was so proud. I found a job teaching French at the high school. I knew you'd take the class when you got there._

He beamed when he said that, and Mattie feels his stomach lurch into his throat at the memory. Not so much because he had chosen to take German, but because the thought of studying French had always made him feel physically ill. He probably would've taken Chinese, if it had been offered, and it had hurt him in ways he couldn't possibly begin to explain when Al had chosen French in his sophomore year—one of the more surprisingly callous things his brother had ever done.

 _That was the summer you turned ten_ —Eleven, actually, Mattie thinks— _so I knew I'd have to wait a few years. I almost decided to find you earlier, but I thought it would be best if our meeting happened more naturally._

Mattie almost laughed incredulously at those words, but a mix of pity and horror restrained him as he looked at Francis' earnest face. He presses his thumbs into his temples and walks faster, trying to erase that terrible face, alight with totally unselfconscious joy, from his memory. All that does, however, is summon up the change that took place in Francis' voice and appearance as he moved on with the story.

_It was so hard to wait, Mathieu, knowing you were so close and yet I couldn't see you. I began to be afraid that you wouldn't want to see me, that you might be angry with me. Those fears should have made me go to you sooner, but—mon Dieu—I was a coward. I waited, and grew more afraid. I waited until I could not bear it any longer._

Then, impassively, Francis related in gruesome, heartrending detail, a story that matched to the letter a rumor Mattie had heard at school more than once, of a teacher who had attempted suicide near the end of his first year teaching. The entire thing had been hushed up by the school, students said, and the car found half-submerged in the river painted as an accident in the local news. By the time Mattie got to high school, there were only a few seniors left who really remembered the man, and nobody ever heard them talk about him. The rumor went that his students had been "asked" by the principal not to discuss the matter, so as to respect the teacher's privacy, or, as the more skeptical liked to put it, to protect the school's reputation. There were two main schools of thought on why this was: that he was a criminal, and had gone to jail, or that he was a lunatic, and had gone to the psych ward.

Mattie was always disturbed by these two generalizations, and studiously avoided the discussing or hearing the rumors, which usually cropped up again at the beginning of the year, when there were new freshmen to astound and terrify with the macabre tale. He thought it unkind to label an unhappy man either bad or crazy, and preferred, when he thought about it at all, to wonder sadly what could drive a man to such extremes.

Him. It was him.

The lump in Mattie's throat seems to grow, and he sees himself once more as he appeared in Francis' bathroom mirror, pale and trembling, wiping sour vomit from his mouth. He feels again the cool tile of the sink, the scalding hot of the water as he washes his shaking hands, taking advantage of the running water to cover the sound of dry, wracking sobs. He hears Francis' timid knock on the bathroom door, his plea to open up, he knows this is a lot to take in, but isn't it all worth it? They're together again.

The sun beats mercilessly at the back of Mattie's spinning head and, seeing a bus stop with a little bench and awning, he decides to sit down for a moment. Fighting the urge to drop his head in his hands—people are walking by and he doesn't want to attract attention—he reaches for his phone. The crack in the screen, which he had forgotten about, angers him, and he's still staring at it with clenched teeth when the bus pulls up and the doors hiss open.

"Yo, kid!"

Mattie looks up, startled, and, not wanting to annoy the bus driver, stands and boards. He rummages in his wallet for change, pays the fare, and settles in the closest seat he can find. The interior of the bus is cool and much dimmer than outside, and it takes a while for Mattie's vision to adjust. The feeling of blindness, normally only a minor annoyance at worst, fills him with panic, and he blinks hard, then stares fixedly at the floor until he can make out every speck on the grey linoleum. He looks up, finally, and the inside of the bus is no longer dark, but unbearably bright and warm with the sunlight flooding in through the huge glass windows, and Mattie closes his eyes as tears begin to threaten at the utter absurdity of everything.

Suddenly aware that people may be looking at him, he rubs his eyes in what he hopes is a nonchalant and unremarkable manner, and pulls out his phone. This does not help, however, as the peaceful mountain landscape on the screen does nothing but remind him that Al has not responded to his call.

"Next stop Maple Street Market," crackles through the speakers as passengers switching lines stream out, and Mattie stands automatically, only to be pushed back into his seat by the lurch of the bus starting. Unreasonably shame-ridden, he drops his head into his hands once more and digs his fingernails into his scalp. When the bus finally does stop at the tiny cafe and grocery, Mattie waits until the two elderly men with walkers also getting off make their way haltingly down the aisle to stand and slip out with a mumble of gratitude to the driver, who only grunts and presses the button to shut the doors almost before Mattie dismounts the last step.

The sun is still oppressively hot, and the back of Mattie's throat is burning from dehydration and vomit. He contemplates the cheerful shop in front of him, but can't bear the thought of neighborly smiles and polite questions. There's a drugstore a quarter of a mile back, and he'll take the longer walk home in exchange for the blessed, surly silence of the old man at the counter there.

. . .

Mattie makes it home, very hot around the neck and only slightly relieved by the over-priced water from the drugstore. Everything is silent, and no Arthur appears as Mattie forces the door closed against the heat-swollen frame. The house is cooler than outdoors merely by virtue of the absence of direct sunlight; the air is just as heavy and suffocating, and Mattie slips off his shoes with what seems a gigantic effort. He contemplates the stairs for several minutes before he can muster the will to lift his feet the necessary number of inches; the steps have never seemed steeper, not even when he was six years old and each one came up to his knee.

Arthur's bedroom door is still closed, and Mattie walks past without pausing to check if he can hear any stirring on the other side. He heads straight to his room and closes the door, leaning wearily against it with barely the energy to shift his back off the knob. Stiff fingers uncurl from the plastic bag he's been clutching from the drugstore, and the twisted handles stick to the creases in his skin for a moment before gravity takes over and the bag drops with a rush and a rattle as it hits the floor. He flexes his fingers for a moment before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone.

_Hi, it's Alfred Jones. Leave a message._

This time he waits for the beep.

"Dammit, Al, why don't you pick up your phone?!"

Hands shaking, he ends the call, and his phone follows the bag from the drugstore, landing with a dull thud. His breath comes with difficulty, jagged and heavy, straining his chest and clawing at his throat. Nevertheless, he listens intently over the sound of his own distress, praying for any indication that Arthur has heard, has been roused by his shouting, is on his way to knock insistently at the door until Mattie lets him in and returns to a world where the people he loves are who he always thought they were.

But all is silent across the hall.

The knowledge that he is effectively alone has a perversely calming effect, and, in command of his breathing once more, Mattie stoops to pick up the bag and his phone. He opens the door to the hallway and steps across to the bathroom. The bag settles with another quiet rattle on the counter, and the mirror reflects a face drawn and empty before it swings open. The phone is against his ear once more, and it rings. Once. Twice. Six times.

_Hi, it's Alfred Jones. Leave a message._

_I waited until I could not bear it any longer._

Mattie's other hand closes around the little blue bottle as the tone sounds.

. . .

Alfred deleted Arthur's number from his phone months ago. Not that he expected Arthur to ever try to contact him, but it gave him a sense of satisfaction to know that if he ever did, he could respond with a cutting "Who is this?".

But when his phone falls away from his ear, leaving behind the echo of a lifeless voice and a hollow "I'm sorry," the first number that comes to his mind is not 911.

Mattie's voicemail is already half an hour old, and Arthur will be able to get to him before an ambulance could even get on the road.

Alfred dials his number from memory.

. . .

There were very few things that could wake Arthur from his pill-induced slumber these days. Mattie was right; he had been taking stronger doses.

But some time a couple years before, just to be obnoxious, Alfred had changed his personalized ringtone to an extremely loud death-metal song.

Arthur never changed it.

. . .

The hum of fluorescent lights is the first thing of which Mattie is conscious. Then a soft, regular beeping sound somewhere off to his left. The third thing is a profound ache in his chest and strange pressure in his arm.

The fourth thing is Al.

"Hey, Matt."

His brother's voice sounds hoarse and strangely choked, and Mattie has to blink several times to bring Al's face into focus and discover his red-rimmed eyes and disheveled hair.

He tries a couple times to say something. Maybe "Hi," or "What's going on?"or "Where am I?" but he can't draw enough breath to speak without a feeling like his lungs are going to collapse and his chest cave in, so he only exhales weakly and looks up at Al with panicked eyes.

"Hey, hey!" Al reaches out in a calming gesture, and smiles shakily. "It's okay. You're fine." He swallows and puts more effort into his smile. "Chest hurt a little?"

Mattie licks his lips and takes a careful breath.

"Yeah," he manages, but immediately screws up his face as he tries to inhale again too quickly. His voice sounds worse than Al's, and his throat is incredibly dry. He struggles for a moment to remember the last time he had a drink, and then it comes back to him, and he sinks further into the pillows, face falling.

Al is watching him intently, and seems to read his every expression.

"Do you remember?"

The question comes softly and not without hesitation. Mattie nods once, swallowing with difficulty, knowing he doesn't have strength or air enough for the question he wants to ask in response.

Al, however, understands, or maybe he just knows what he would want if he was in this situation, and he begins, cautiously, to tell Mattie what happened. And Mattie listens with a sense of shame that runs pale and cold all over him as Al relates how Arthur found him on the bathroom floor with the empty bottle of sleeping pills and half a bottle of cold medicine, unconscious and barely breathing. His chest hurts because Arthur had to start CPR ten minutes before the paramedics arrived at the house.

"He got you breathing again right before they got there, actually." A tone of muted respect Mattie never expected suffuses Al's voice. "I had no idea he could be so calm under pressure like that."

This time it was Mattie's turn to read in his brother's eyes what he did not say out loud. There was a residual terror in them like nothing Mattie had ever seen before, and the ache in his chest is suddenly nothing next to the weight that seems to settle directly above his heart as he realizes that Al had been totally helpless, and that Arthur's calm action felt like a condemnation. He doesn't know how to tell Al not to blame himself, to blame him instead, and so he bows his head and allows the shame to surround and press him on all sides.

Al's hand is warm on his own thin, cold one.

"Earth to Mattie," he says, with something closer to his normal grin, but still gentler. "Come in, Matt."

Just then, the door groans open and the incoming footsteps halt. Mattie looks up.

"Matthew," Arthur says in the same choked, hoarse voice that Al had.

A strange expression passes over Al's face and he stands abruptly. As he turns toward Arthur, he drops his head and lets his hair, almost as shaggy as Mattie's, fall in his eyes. He moves quickly to the door, and although Arthur half-raises a hand as if to stop him, the two pass each other without a word. Arthur looks undecided for a moment, even glances over his shoulder at the door swinging closed, but eventually steps toward Mattie's bed and takes his foster son's hand.

"Matthew," he repeats, and bends down to press his forehead to Mattie's. "I am so sorry."

The pressure in his chest is almost unbearable. It has to come out somehow, or else Mattie will choke on the lump in his throat.

"Me too," he whispers, and squeezes Arthur's hand weakly.

Arthur closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Then he places his hand on Mattie's head and smiles with misty eyes.

"I'm so glad you're awake. I'll be back in a minute, is that okay?"

Mattie nods and watches as Arthur slips back out of the room. The door closes, but Mattie can still see him through the small window above the knob. His lips move, and Al comes into view as well, apparently standing up from a chair just outside. Even hunched with exhaustion and grief, Al is markedly taller than Arthur now. They speak quietly back and forth, peacefully, as equals. And then Arthur reaches up, putting his hands on either side of Al's face and speaking earnestly. Al does not draw back from his touch, and suddenly Arthur pulls him into a tight embrace. They stand there for a long time, shoulders shaking.

Mattie leans back and looks up at the ceiling as warm tears begin to roll down his face.

**_FIN_ **


End file.
